Harry Potter's Time Traveling Twin Sister Who Is Also a Ninja
by Writingathing
Summary: What happens when you cross Harry Potter with Naruto with Haruhi Suzumiya? Will Hariya Potter be able to save England with Naruto's help and return to her own time?
1. The Necklace

_I'm not interested in ordinary people. But if anyone out there is a time traveler, ninja, or wizard, then please come see me. I live in the attic above the stairs at 4 Privet Drive in Little Whinging, Surrey in the year 1990…._

Hariya Potter clicked her heels together three times. Before she opened her eyes, she held herself still, hands clenched tight. For a moment all that existed was the breath caught in her nose and her palms rubbing against her fingertips, and it was still possible that the universe was obliterated and recreated anew and far more interesting.

Hesitantly, she opened her eyes, hoping to see—

Nope. Same old Privet Drive. Same old identical houses lined up neatly, identical cars parked out in front. Indistinguishable individuality in the gardens, choice of flowers and so on.

Her uncle was watching from inside the house. "Hariya! No magic!"

No magic? For someone who was so obsessively mundane, who wouldn't even let Hariya watch Uri Geller on the TV, Uncle Vernon went out of his way to punish any attempts at magic. Uncle Vernon believed that magic wasn't real as strongly as Hariya believed it was, and they were each equally determined to prove they were right. She held up her fingers and snapped them just to make him angry.

"No magic, girl!" Uncle Vernon said. "Go to your room!"

Hariya walked inside, her nose sticking up in the air, and headed up to the attic above the stairs where she slept. Like being sent to her room was a punishment. Like there was anything interesting to do outside in Privet Drive.

But inside her attic...

Hariya squeezed past the small bed and pushed on the heavy wooden frame leaning against the wall. Grunting and heaving, she moved it out of the way, revealing what looked to be just another part of the wall. She fitted an expired credit card she had stolen from her aunt's purse between a thin crack running up the wall and carefully pushed. Part of the wall swung open like a door, revealing the Shrine Of Interesting Things.

There was a poster of Einstein, stolen from the school library, and images of Captain James Cook, Theodore Roosevelt, and Neil Armstrong. There was every issue of Sandman, also stolen from the library, worn with use, stacks of Nancy Drew novels and paperbacks by Asimov and Pohl, newspaper clippings about NASA and the moon landing, and everything about new planets and the potential for alien life. Pictures of Eratosthenes, Robert Falcon Scott, and not Doctor Manhattan (she hated _Watchmen_). And on and on, the walls covered with articles and images, stacks of fantasy, mystery, and science fiction novels piled high...

Hariya picked _Small Gods_ out of the mountain of books and lay back on her bed, legs dangling over the end, and she started to read.

* * *

><p>It should perhaps be noted at this time that the Shrine Of Interesting Things was the only thing keeping the world from being destroyed.<p>

Hariya was an unusual girl. She was right-handed but left-footed, she could read, write, and do math at a ninth grade level even though she was due to start sixth grade when summer ended, and she was God, able to manipulate reality as easily as breathing. Hariya was unable to use her power deliberately. Perhaps this was fortunate, since her maturity, her teachers swore, was not at a ninth-grade level, regardless of how well she did on tests. In fact, she was entirely unaware of her power, and it manifested itself subconsciously. One time when chased by other children she wound up on the roof of a house with no explanation, sometimes she could tell when people were lying, she had talked to a snake once...things like that.

And God was bored. So, so bored, of her boring life in boring Privet Drive, where every looked and acted the same, and no one aspired to do anything more than work a respectable job from 9 to 5 and come back home to eat dinner, watch TV, and go to bed. Bored of her image-conscious aunt and uncle, her fat, piggish cousin, her life trapped in this closet, bored of everything.

Hariya wanted one thing in life, and that was to explore, to discover, for exciting things to happen and the boundaries of the world to fall away like a the sail of a ship passing the horizon.

Privet Drive was a fortress built to stand against all things interesting.

And God was impatient. Restless. Wishing things weren't as they were.

Although God didn't know it, reality worked as God willed it. And if God willed reality otherwise, then all the laws of reality would follow like sheep.

The Shrine Of Interesting Things, the tabernacle of everything that held God's interest, was all that kept God from sweeping our reality aside like table crumbs and replacing it with a world of ninjas, magic, and adventure.

The school library was small. Its budget shrank every year.

Hariya Potter was running out of books.

* * *

><p>"Girl! Girl!"<p>

Someone banging on the door. Uncle Vernon. Hariya opened her eyes.

"Girl, you haven't set the table yet! Dinner's almost begun!"

Hariya glanced at the small hole in the far wall of the attic she used to tell time. It was dark.

Her eyes slid down to the book, resting by her hand.

_Oh, no._

The door burst open. Uncle Vernon strode into the room.

"You, girl, did you fall asleep?" He was a large, fat man, balding and permanently angry with her. Then he saw the Shrine, which Hariya had not closed.

His eyes bulged, his face turned a nasty shade of purple, matching the vein that throbbed in his temple. His tongue spluttered incoherently, his throat choked on his own rage, and then he bellowed, "WHAT THE RUDDY HELL HAVE YOU DONE TO MY WALL, GIRL?" His feet pounded the floor like a pair of irate elephants as he made his way to the Shrine.

"No!" she cried, grabbing her book and running toward him. He grabbed her arm harshly, ripped the book out of her hand, and threw it across the room. He yanked on her arm, leaning down, his small eyes glaring at her.

"This is my property!" he spat. "I took you in when your good-for-nothing parents died, and this is how you repay me? Forgetting your chores and ripping up my wall! You should be grateful that I let you eat!"

He pushed her away and turned to the Shrine. He pulled down the pile of books, kicked and stamped on them, ripped down the pictures and newspaper clippings. Panting, dripping with sweat, his thick hands defiled the Shrine of Interesting Things, tore down the altar, cast aside the icons, trampled the holy texts, destroyed everything God cared for in her life.

"No!" Hariya shrieked, grabbing at his sweater. "Stop it!"

He spun and pushed her away, shoving her back several feet.

"You go set the table RIGHT NOW!" he thundered. "While I deal with this vandalism."

Hariya set the table. She sat across from her fat cousin, Dudley as usual. His mother, Aunt Petunia, talked about something she had seen one of their neighbors doing through the window. They were occasionally distracted by the sound of hammering. Twenty-five minutes later, Uncle Vernon came down, red-faced and damp, with a satisfied smirk on his face.

"That's all taken care of!" he said loudly. "Won't have any more trouble like that around here!"

Hariya spooned soup into her mouth. Later, when dinner was finished and she had cleared and washed the plates and silverware and cleaned the table, she went back up to the attic above the stairs.

Wood boards were nailed to where the Shrine had been. The books, pictures, and newspaper clippings were gone.

Nothing remained of value to God in our reality.

* * *

><p>The next day, two things of note occurred. The first was Hariya's eleventh birthday. There were no presents, of course, and no party, not that Hariya wanted one. Aunt Petunia was a bit less careless and cruel, Dudley and Uncle Vernon unchanged. The second was that a golden necklace appeared under Hariya's pillow that morning.<p>

Hariya fished it out. It was light and beautiful, and on the necklace hung a perfect circle inside a perfect circle, and within the smaller circle was a thin disk, with an hourglass inscribed on the surface. Hariya slipped it on and hurried down to make breakfast.

Later that day, Hariya sat outside, looked around carefully to see if any of the Dursleys were watching, and took out the necklace. She peered carefully at the disk with the hourglass. She poked it. The disk wobbled, as if it could rotate, and so did the world.

Hariya looked around in shock. Had everything really just...? She poked it again. Yes, a wobble, almost as if the entire earth was deciding whether to flip upside down.

She took a deep breath and flicked the disk hard, and it rotated around, one, two, three, four, five, six times.

The world blurred, flickered, vanished at the same time that it came into focus. Concrete and asphalt became grass and tall trees, houses and cars disappeared, and so did the people, and suddenly Privet Drive was a long expanse of bright green grass and nothing else.

"Whoa," Hariya said. _Did I just teleport? Or...travel to a different world? Awesome!_

Hariya stood up, looking around at the long stretch of green in all directions. She breathed; the air was different, cleaner and purer, and smelled different, and a wild excitement rose up inside her. Her imagination spread out its wings and took flight.

_Finally!_

Hariya ran ran through the grass, which sloped gently upwards, until she stood high on a hill. She looked down as the world dropped away from her, her mind racing to fill up the space, and she threw back her head and laughed with pleasure. Down below, in the distance, Hariya could see lights.

_People? A town? Wizards?_

Hariya dragged her feet as she made her way through the trees. She could see a lot farther in the clean air, and the city—for it was a city, a large one—was much farther away than she had realized. Her feet ached, and her hands were wrenched painfully behind her, her head pushed forward and down, and a knife was at her throat.

Before she could so much as scream she was bound, blindfolded, and trundled along. Whoever had tied her up wasn't speaking, and their weren't even making a sound as they raced along. The sounds of the city grew closer, and a few minutes later whoever was carrying her jumped, once, twice, and they were off again. They carried Hariya for a while, in the air as much as on the ground as best as she could tell, and then they stopped.

"What's this?" a voice said.

"My team captured her alone encroaching on our borders in the forest," a male voice said.

_We? There's more than one? I didn't notice!_

"A spy?" the first voice said. It sounded bored.

"Probably," the second voice said, the one holding her. It sounded even more bored.

"Fine, hand her over for interrogation."

Hariya was pushed forward and then dragged, as if the hands holding her had changed.

"Come on, kids, let's go pick up our payment," the second voice said.

"Man, I feel great!" a younger, boyish voice shouted. "We caught a spy, like real shinobi!"

"We are real shinobi, moron," another young voice said, more serious in tone.

"Yeah, exactly!"

"Never mind, dumbass."

"I get it, Sasuke," a third voice, higher pitched and excited.

"Only that idiot wouldn't have," the second voice said, and the retort was lost as Hariya was pulled away like a sack of potatoes. Whoever it was pulled her along for awhile, handed her off to someone else, and so on until she was dropped unceremoniously on a hard stone floor. There was the sound of a metal gate slamming shut. Her gag was torn away, and she sucked in air loudly.

"Ow! What is going on here? Who are you people? Where am I?"

Someone began remove the blindfold, and blots of blurry grey stone fell into view for an instant.

"She could have an eye jutsu!" a voice snapped, and the blindfold was put back.

"Hey!" she shouted. "I'm just a girl, I'm not a spy. I turned eleven today, for crying out loud!"

"Young enough to have a bloodline limit," the voice said.

"What the heck is a bloodline limit?"

But there was no answer.


	2. Meeting Naruto

"Has she stopped talking?"

"Not once."

"Let me out of here!" Hariya kicked at the ground. "I know you can hear me 'cause I can hear you! Give me my necklace back!"

"We've had to rotate shifts at double the normal rate. Think it's some kind of jutsu?"

"A genjutsu without seals, just by sound? No way."

"WHAT THE HECK IS A GENJUTSU?"

"I swear her voice is getting more and more high-pitched."

"BECAUSE I'VE BEEN SHOUTING FOR HOURS, MORONS!"

* * *

><p>"Hokage-sama." The large man knelt and bowed his head.<p>

"Ah, Ibiki," said a grey-bearded man sitting behind a mountain of papers that buried a small wooden desk. He looked up. "How goes the interrogation? I'm surprised you had to be called for a young girl."

"Ah, yes, about that. Genjutsu aren't getting through," Ibiki said. "At all. It's like she doesn't even have chakra to manipulate."

"Some kind of seal?"

"No trace of chakra anywhere around her or within."

The hokage stroked his beard. "That's impossible. Perhaps a bloodline limit? Although I've never heard of any such thing."

"More pressingly, our investigation has yielded no results. We still have no idea who she is or why she was sneaking around in our forest, and I think you can agree that it's important we find out just who and what she is." Ibiki rubbed at the dark cap stretched over his bald head. "I need approval to proceed to a more...primitive method of interrogation on a child."

"She's just a child," the hokage mused. "I am uncomfortable with torturing her."

"She's been torturing my men for hours," Ibiki said.

"No, it's unnecessary," the hokage said. "Not on a child, when her only crime is trespassing, and we don't even know if she is a spy. She was picked up rather easily by Kakashi's team, wasn't she?"

"There's no need to take risks, either," Ibiki said. "She might have wanted to be captured."

"A spy from any of the other villages would expect torture," the hokage said. "They don't believe the rumors of our gentle sweetness. She might just be a little girl. And if she's not, she'll reveal her true nature in freedom, not locked in prison or even under your capable hands. I'll assign an ANBU squad to watch her every step. For now, bring her to me."

* * *

><p>Hariya was roughly hauled up and marched out of the cell.<p>

"Where are you taking me now?" she demanded, but there was no answer. "Hey! Anyone listening?"

She was marched for several minutes, handed off and walked up stairs, down stairs, around and around, until she was stopped. Her hands were untied and the blindfold removed, and before she could so much as turn around and plant her foot in someone's crotch she was pushed through a door, and she stumbled and fell to her knees. She pushed herself up, glanced behind her—

"Oh, please stand, I can't be fussed with all this bowing, not from young girls," an elderly voice said.

Hariya whirled around and nearly fell over, the world still coming into focus. She was in...an office? There was an old man sitting behind a desk smoking a pipe.

"Who're you?" Hariya demanded.

"My name is hokage-sama," the old man said. "I am the leader of Konohagakure."

"Konoha-what?" Hariya said. "Where is this place? What's going on?"

"This is England. Are you not from around here?"

"Of course I'm from England! And this is definitely not England."

"No?" the elderly man said. He seemed surprised. "Then where are we?"

Hariya thought about this. "Outer space?" she tried hopefully. "Atlantis?"

"What is Outer Space Atlantis?"

"Never mind.

"No matter," the old man said . He smiled, pushing wrinkles across his face. "May I ask your name?"

"Hariya Potter, sixth grade."

"Sixth grade? Is that a very high level?"

"I'm really at a ninth-grade level."

"Ninth grade? My, my. And what was a ninth-grader doing in my forest, pray tell?"

"Your forest?" Hariya exclaimed. "Well, excuse me. I didn't know we were just going around claiming forests. What are you doing in my office?"

"You are really quite annoying," Hokage-sama said in a friendly voice. "Yet I'm afraid I can't let you go free until I have a better sense of who you are and what danger you might pose to my village."

"Hariya Potter. I'm a sixth grader! We're not dangerous, I promise." Hariya folded her arms. "And I didn't realize I was trespassing so I don't see why your goons had to tie me up like that, putting their hands on my head and mutter about genjujus and chakawhatever and all that. Haven't you guys ever heard of the Geneva Convention?"

"I'm afraid not."

Hariya wasn't sure either except that it had something to do with captured prisoners. "Well, you better not mess with me, or the Genevians will get you!"

The old man's eyes narrowed. "So you're from Geneva, are you? Or their hidden village?"

"I'm not saying anything." Hariya pinched her thumb and index finger together and ran it across her lips, making a twisting motion at the end.

"I see. In that case, I'm afraid I can't allow you to roam freely within my village. Whether you're a spy or—"

"What?" Hariya cried. "No, that's the opposite of what you're supposed to do. The more dangerous you think I am, the nicer you have to be with me. That's how it works."

Hokage-sama stood up from his chair. He was taller than he appeared while sitting.

"If you think the House of Tudor can be intimidated by some fledgling nation, you are mistaken. I don't know who the king of Geneva thinks he is—"

"Oh, it's not just Geneva," Hariya said, waving a finger. "It's the whole United Nations. Europe and Russia and America and everyone, basically."

"You must think I am a fool," Hokage-sama said. "There is no and never will be an alliance on the continent, let alone with Russia. Who would be crazy to trust that Ivan? And _what the hell is America_?"

"It's in outer space," Hariya said. If where she was now was in outer space, then technically it was true, wasn't it?

"America resides in Outer Space Atlantis, you say? Yet I have never heard of it. Are you from there?"

"Yes." Also true, technically.

Hokage-sama fixed his eyes on hers. "And you are their emissary? Their spy?"

"Well, I'm not American, I'm British," Hariya said. "If I was American I'd be talking liking this," She contorted her voice into her best approximation of an American accent, "Oh, I wonder how far my gun can shoot? Let's measure that in units with random conversion factors, eh, homeboys?"

"What?"

"So you had best not bother me or they'll _nuke_ you."

"What kind of a jutsu is nuke?

Hariya had no idea what a jutsu was. "The biggest jutsu," Hariya bluffed. "So big."

They stared into each others's eyes, daring the other to blink. Finally, Hokage-sama looked away.

The old man sat down heavily. "I see," he said, looking at his desk. "And what was their reason for sending you?"

"They didn't send me," Hariya said. "I just wound up here, okay? Because of the n—" Hariya stopped. "I just teleported or something."

Hokage-sama took a document out of his desk. "Indeed. Well, if that is truly the case, then I can allow you to walk freely in the village, although I can't let you leave. We have housing for those with nowhere else to this to the Office of Housing and Work on the third floor." He scribbled something on the paper and affixed a large black stamp to the top right of the paper.

"Thanks, I guess," Hariya said, taking the paper. Couldn't be worse than Privet Drive.

"I'll have one of my men help you find the place," Hokage-sama said. "Welcome to Konoha."

"Sure thing," Hariya said, turning around and heading to the door. She opened it and stopped suddenly, turning back to the old man.

"And give me my necklace back!"

* * *

><p>"Right there." The man accompanying Hariya pointed at the large yellow building with a brick-orange roof.<p>

"It's ugly," Hariya said.

The man shrugged unsympathetically. This was the worst mission he had been on since...actually, no, this was the worst mission he had ever been on. A-rank, easily, if not higher.

"Are you going to hold my hand up the stairs too?" Hariya said.

He almost snapped. "No, just go inside so I can report that I finished my mission.

She didn't even answer, just walked inside.

The inside of the apartment was narrow, with thin walls made of crumbling wood and cracking paint. Hariya made her way up and around, leading to a small porch in front of a line of doors. A blonde boy in a t-shirt and shorts sat on the rail, piling noodles into his mouth with a pair of sticks. He looked like summer ought to, Hariya decided.

Hariya walked over to him. "Hey, do you know which is room 237?"

The boy's eyes widened, and he choked on his noodles. Hacking and coughing, he almost falling off the rail before Hariya grabbed him.

He coughed again, spitting out bits of noodle. "Room 237? That's—Hey, you're that spy!" He jumped away, landing balanced on the rail, hands poised to fight. "How did you escape?"

Hariya put her hands on her hips. "I'm not a spy, and I escaped because that old Hokage-something guy let me out." She held up her housing document as proof. "See, it's got his signature and stamp and everything." The boy approached carefully and snatched the paper out of her hand. He studied it.

Hariya tapped her foot impatiently. "How long does it take you to read?"

The boy's face was defensive. "No one ever believed in me. I've spent most of my formative years looking for a father figure."

"Whatever."

"Well, it's definitely his signature, anyway." He smiled, wide and honest. "If you're all right with the Hokage then you're all right with me. I'm Uzumaki Naruto and I'm going to be Hokage and make the whole village acknowledge me!" He thrust a thumb at himself proudly.

"I'm Hariya Potter and I'm going to live the most interesting life ever."

"Well, you've gotten off to a good start." Naruto leaned in and whispered conspiratorially. He had three horizontal lines running along each cheek like the whiskers of a fox. "No one has lived in Room 237 for years...not since the _murder_ happened."

Hariya's eyes were wide. "Cool."

* * *

><p>The room was mostly bare and plain, with a thin, itchy carpet and a small bed that squeaked loudly when Hariya sat on it.<p>

"It's not much," Naruto muttered.

"Are you kidding?" Hariya bounced on the bed, producing an awful racket. "This is awesome." She got up and began feeling around the walls. "I wonder where I'll put my Shrine."

"Shrine?" Naruto watched quizzically as she felt her way around the room.

"Yeah, like, a collection of all the cool stuff in my life. What's interesting about you, Nar-Nar?"

"Nar-Nar?"

Hariya felt her way around the last of the wall. "Just testing out nicknames. We'll see what sticks. Man, this stuff is thin. I could probably stick my finger through i—whoops."

"Ah, don't worry about it," Naruto grinned, knotting his hands behind his head. "I wreck my room all the time training."

"Training?" Hariya looked up from the small hole. "Just what is it you do, Mr. Naruto?"

"I'm a shinobi!" Naruto said.

"What's that?"

"I'm a ninja!"

Time stopped. Hariya's shriek of excitement expanded beyond the reach of mere space-time, an extradimensional explosion of joy.

Time started, and our universe was not sucked into a multidimensional vortex that would have ripped apart the very fabric of the fundamental fabric of physical law along with everything else.

"Prove it prove it prove it right now! Do something ninja!"

"Not a problem!" Naruto pinched the metal band on his forehead. "I'll show you a shadow clone!"

Hariya nodded and Naruto stepped back, coughed, flexed and stretched a bit—

"Come on, come on." Hariya's fingers drummed against her leg.

Naruto placed his hands in front of him at right angles to each other with the two longest fingers extended. He concentrated for a second, and with a sudden boof! and a cloud of smoke a second Naruto stood by the first, grinning and scratching the back of his head.

"Awesome!" Hariya poked the second Naruto. "How'd you do that?"

"It's a jutsu." Naruto wore a proud smile.

"Any ninja can do stuff like this," the second Naruto said.. "But I'm going to be the best!"

Hariya pinched the second Naruto's cheek.. "Is it sentient?" she asked, meaning the clone. She had learned the word in one of her science fiction books.

"What's that mean?"

"It's like, is he aware of his own awareness?"

Naruto shrugged. "Probably." He held up two fingers in front of his mouth, tensed for a moment, and the clone disappeared in a puff of smoke.

"Teach me how to do that," Hariya demanded

"Okay!" Naruto spread his legs apart, squatting, and brought his arms up perpendicular, crossing at two extended fingers. "Do like I do."

"Okay, now what?"

"Now...you shadow clone!"

"Right!" Hariya said. "What?"

"And...shadow clone!" Again there was loud puff of smoke and a second Naruto appeared next to the first, smirking proudly.

"Okay!" Hariya said. "Shadow clone!"

"That's the spirit!" both Narutos said. "Come on! Shadow clone!"

"Shadow clone!"

"Shadow clone"

"Shadow...clone!"

"SHAAAAADOW CLONE!"

"SHEEEAAAAAARGH CLOOOOOOONEAGH!"

* * *

><p>Hariya sat on her bed while Naruto lay on the floor, gasping for breath.<p>

"Dying!" he panted. "Need...chakra!"

Hariya poked him with her foot. "What's chakra? And how come it didn't work for me?"

"You...must be...a no-talent...loser!" Naruto gasped. "Get me...ramen!"

"I'm not a loser!" Hariya said. She felt frustrated and annoyed. "I'm usually really good at everything. I even read and write and do math at a ninth grade level."

"Ramen!"

"Get it yourself!"

* * *

><p>"So what does a ninja do, exactly?"<p>

"All kinds of things," Naruto said. "Find people's lost cats, painting houses super fast—I'm the best at it because I can use shadow clones—apologizing for pranks..."

_Boring_, Hariya thought as Naruto's list went on.

"...And there was the time when we escorted a bridge-builder guy and we got attacked by these crazy ninjas there was this guy with this huge sword and he was all like 'I am the Demon Zabuza grrr' and this chick with ice powers..."

"Whoa!" Hariya exclaimed. "What happened?

"I beat him. With my shadow clones, a clever plan, and some teamwork," Naruto said.

"Nice!"

"Yeah, first I used my shadow clones, and then I was all like fshwaah! with my throwing stars—I have throwing stars—and then I punched the chick, but like so hard..."

* * *

><p>"So where're you from, anyway?" Naruto said in between loud slurps of ramen.<p>

"England," Hariya sighed, looking out over the railing, sitting on a beaten chair Naruto had dragged out. She was bored again now that it looked like she wouldn't be developing magical powers.

"A local, huh? So what were you doing wandering in the forest? Mm, ramen."

"I didn't know you ninjas kidnapped people for sneaking around in forests," Hariya said. "I'm just looking for something interesting to do."

"You should be a ninja!" Naruto said. "It's a life of adventure. We go on missions and stuff."

"Rescuing cats."

"Hey!" Naruto pointed his chopsticks at her. "That's just 'cuz I'm a genin. When I pass the chunin test, I'll go on all kinds of real badass missions!"

"Chunin test?" Hariya looked at Naruto with renewed interest. "What's that?"

"Genin are junior ninja, like me. And chunin are middle ninja. They do all kinds of kickass stuff."

"Okay!" Hariya said, eyes shining fiercely. "Let's become chunin! How do we take this test?"

Naruto drank the remaining broth and wiped his mouth with the back of his arm. "I dunno. Sakura knows about stuff. I just do shadow clones."

"What's a Sakura?"

Naruto's eyes lit up. "The most beautiful girl in the world. She's got pink hair and the biggest forehead you've ever seen, and she's super smart and knows everything that I forgot from school or never learned because no one ever believed in me."

"There's a school for learning how to use awesome supernatural powers?" For some reason, the idea felt familiar and true.

"Yeah, school is lame."

"Alright, let's find this Sakura and become chunin, Naruto!"

"Uh..." Naruto squinted. "You don't know any jutsus."

"That doesn't matter."

Naruto's hand slapped down hard on the wooden railing. His face was furious, contorted in a mad fox's snarl.

"Don't joke about things you don't understand!" he shouted. "The life of a shinobi isn't easy. You can't just waltz in here and become a chunin just because you say so! It takes years of hard work and training." He stopped suddenly, glaring at her, breathing heavily.

"Whatever. I said I'm going to be a chunin, so I'm going to be a chunin." She grabbed his wrist and yanked him with her. "Now let's go find this 'Sakura' and make her give us the chunin test. Don't worry; I read, write, _and_ do math at a ninth grade level."

* * *

><p>"Naruto, stop bothering me!"<p>

A pink-haired creature with a forehead like Olympus Mons stuck its head out of the window. "I told you not to bother me when I'm at home."

"Hey, Sakura, come on down." Naruto waved. "Tell us about the chunin test."

"We won't be ready to take the test for a few more years at least!" Sakura said. "We only just became genin, and frankly Kakashi hasn't taught us a thing. Besides, something like that is way too dangerous." She peered down at Hariya. "Who's this, your new girlfriend?"

Hariya fixed her vision on Sakura.

"You," she said. "I will dress you in a bunny outfit." It felt right.

Sakura paused.

"She seems nice. OK, I'll come down. Wait there."

A minute later Sakura came out the door wearing...Hariya had no idea. Some kind of sack with bike shorts? Alien fashions were bizarre.

"Naruto, did you forget everything Iruka-sensei told us about the chunin exam back in school?" she said. The pink-haired thing glanced at Hariya. "I'm Haruno—wait, I know you! We caught you in the forest!"

Hariya's crotch-kicking foot twitched instinctively. "Oh, I didn't recognize you."

"It's cool, she's friendly," Naruto said. "Hey, Sakura, you look really pretty today."

"Stuff it, Naruto." To Hariya: "So are you a Konoha genin too?"

"I'm a sixth-grader from England. Why is your forehead so big?"

"Hey, Sakura, she wants to become a chunin too, it's great, it's cool," Naruto said soothingly as a vein in Sakura's temple began to throb.

"Shut up, Naruto. Listen, you, I don't know what a 'sixth-grader' is, but becoming a chunin isn't easy."

Hariya shrugged. "If you're in the running it can't be too hard."

Sakura's eyelid twitched. "If you're not even a genin, there's no way you could become a chunin. It's never happened."

Hariya stared at Sakura with a blank expression. "Make it so."

* * *

><p>"Hokage-sama, preparations for the second trial have been finalized."<p>

The old man in his simple white robes nodded. "Very well, then let's—ARE YOU WEARING FISHNET?"

"I have a flak jacket covering about 20, 25 percent of my body. Sometimes."

"Doesn't it get cold?"

"Nah, I just curse seal it up when I get chilly."

Hokage-sama paused. "Okay, you're definitely not supposed to do that."

The kunoichi rubbed the spot behind her left shoulder. "It's his 'gift' to me. I'll use it as I see fit."

A chunin walking by with a stack of papers couldn't help but glance at the hokage and the high-ranking jonin. "'His?'"

Hokage-sama turned toward the window, gazing at the blue sky. "My most talented pupil...and my greatest failure."

"It wasn't your fault," the kunoichi said. "He was twisted to the core from the beginning."

Hokage-sama shook his head. "If I had only killed him that day...or paid more attention to all the murders and corpses that started disappearing at the same time that he began researching forbidden jutsu."

"F-forbidden jutsu?" the chunin gasped, almost dropping the stack of paper.

"Yes...that man," the hokage said, "One of the Three Sannin..."

"T-the Three Sannin?" the chunin gasped, dropping the stack of papers.

"Dammit, Hasook!" the hokage muttered. "Yes, one of the Three Sannin, Orochimaru!"

"O-Oroch—"

"Stop that!"

Hokage-sama turned to the kunoichi. "Anko, you should be more careful with the cursed seal. It eats away at your body."

"It's burning again, even through the seal you placed on it, Hokage-sama," Anko admitted. "I think he's back."

"B-back?"

"Get out of here!"

When the chunin had hastily gathered up his papers and left, Hokage-sama approached Anko.

"You really think he's back?"

"The seal is getting stronger."

Hokage-sama stroked his grey beard. "And the chunin exams are about to start, held in Konoha this year. Call it an old man's intuition, but I feel that there may be a connection."

"Then we'll increase the security even more. Whatever he's planning, we ANBU will stop it."

Hokage-sama sighed, a long, slow breath. "That may not be enough. Orochimaru is...powerful. Maybe if the other Sannin were here...or the Fourth...but I, I cannot defeat him."

"Hokage-sama—"

"I do not know if there is anyone in the village today who can defeat an Orochimaru bent on revenge. I am afraid I might not be able to fulfill my duties as Hokage."

"No," Anko said, "You're the Third Hokage, you carry the Will of Fire—"

But Hokage-sama only shook his head. "Orochimaru was my most talented student, and he undoubtedly has grown more powerful through the use of forbidden and invented jutsus. His enormous chakras, his giant snakes—"

"His ability to fly."

"—His well-known ability to fly," Hokage-sama agreed. "He is strongly than me." He said it with the simplicity of a known fact.

The Third Hokage turned away, slowly walking to his office.

"There must be some way!" Anko cried after him.

He stopped in front of the door, turned his head so that he could see her.

He smiled grimly. "Perhaps if the laws of reality themselves could be altered, we might have a chance."

He stepped inside his office, closing the door behind him.

* * *

><p>Deep in in a pit underground where hardly any light reached, a long, thin sword pulled out of the Fourth Kazekage's chest with a <em>shhhlk<em>. A tongue held it by the hilt, and drew the sword up and inside the mouth of a tall, pale man, with long black hair, who swallowed the sword whole, blood and steel, like a snake eating a rat.

Another man stepped out of the shadows, pale blonde hair tied back in a ponytail.

"Well done, Orochimaru-sama. With this, we have secured control of the Sand." He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose.

The pale man licked his lips, the tongue trembling and flickering in the air. "The chunin exam is in a month. We will have to prepare a...special team to send to dear old Konoha to represent the Sand. Deal with the body, Kabuto."

"Yes, Orochimaru-sama."

The pale man smiled thinly. "Begin Operation: Crush The Leaf."

"We began that when we killed the Kazekage, Orochimaru-sama."

"Begin Phase Two!"


	3. Adventure Friends

"Write this down," Hariya said as she, Naruto, and Sakura walked down the street of Konohagakure. "At the top: List of Goals for Hariya the Adventurer While She's In The Ninja Village." Naruto patted his clothes for a pen or piece of paper.

"One: find out how ninja powers work and how to get them." Hariya said. Naruto looked beseechingly at Sakura, who rolled her eyes. "Two: find out where I am and explore it."

"I won't ever let down my friends or betray my promises," Naruto muttered, biting his fingertips until he drew blood. Hurriedly he began to draw letters on the sleeve of his bright orange jacket.

"Three: find whoever the Prime Minister of ninjas is and conquer this land in the name of Great Britain!" (Hariya had learned some unfortunate lessons from some of her historical heroes.)

"What?" Sakura shrieked as Naruto desperately tried to keep the blood from running. In an instant Sakura had a knife out and leveled it at Hariya. "I knew it! You are a spy!"

Hariya sneered. "Don't you know violence is the last refuge of the incompetent? Anyway, I'm not a spy. Spies are liars and I believe in the power of truth!"

(Hariya took her books far too seriously.)

"Of course I know violence is the last refuge of the incompetent," Sakura said. "We shinobi are trained to use it as a first refuge."

"So why'd you brandish your knife in front of me and challenge me like that?"

"Sneak attacks never work. It would look like I had killed you, but then you would just turn into a log and disappear."

"What?"

"Hey, the blood dried." Naruto proudly showed Hariya his bloody jacket sleeve. "What's next?"

"EEEEK! WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?"

* * *

><p>"It's not like I even have a flag to plant anyway," Hariya mused. Naruto spat on his sleeve and wiped at it.<p>

"Ninjas don't use flags." Sakura had put the knife away but still watched Hariya suspiciously. "We approach stealthily in the darkness."

"I'm not a ninja," Hariya said. "I'm an Adventurer. And you two are my Adventure Friends."

"What friends?" Sakura said.

"Adventure what?" Naruto said.

"Okay!" Hariya shouted, coming to a halt. She turned to face her new minions. "Listen up and listen good, mateys! You are hereby officially conscripted into the British Navy by the power vested in me by the Kingdom of Britannia, Commodore Potter of the 5th Royal Fleet!"

"Uhhh..." Naruto put his fingers in his lips again. "Am I shupposhed to be writing shish down?"

"No! No more writing!"

"Yes! Finally!"

"Now listen!" Hariya glared at Naruto until he held still. "As seamen, you will obey me, your commanding officer-"

"Did you say Britannia?" Sakura interrupted. "What century are you from?"

"Don't interrupt your commanding officer! Our mission is to take this land in the name of Britain-"

"This is Britain-"

"So first we need a flag."

"Why?" Naruto asked.

"To plant it in the ground, of course. That's how you claim something in the name of something else."

"Oh." Naruto's eyes swelled with a virgin understanding of the nature of geopolitical reality.

Hariya grabbed her new conscripts by the wrist and started walking, dragging them along. "Take me to where we can get fabric and colors."

"But you're pulling us in the wrong direction!"

* * *

><p>"You're lucky Kakashi-sensei has a meeting today," Sakura said as Naruto carried out a thick stack of fabric at Hariya's direction.<p>

"Who?"

"Our sensei."

"Your what?"

"He trains us and leads us on missions and stuff," Naruto supplied.

"Hasn't taught us a thing," Sakura muttered. "Doesn't lead too much, for that matter."

"You guys can forget that stuff," Hariya said. "Now you're my seamen." Hariya had never even seen the ocean in her life, but she had seen pictures, darn it, and she knew she would find her way onto a ship someday exploring the coast of a foreign land.

"Sounds good," Naruto said.

"Naruto!" Sakura glared at him. "You're part of the Konohagakure military. If you defect now, you'll never become Hokage!"

"What?" Naruto dropped the stack of parchment. "Don't you ever get in the way of me becoming Hokage! It's my dream!"

Hariya placed two fingers on his forehead and pushed him back. "Whoa there, Ordinary Seaman. What's the fuss here? Hokage Sama or whatever his name is is doing fine."

"It's not a name, it's a title," Sakura said. "The Hokage is the leader of all the ninja in Konoha."

"Yeah, and I'm going to become Hokage and make the whole village acknowledge me!" Naruto said, breathing heavily, his face contorted into a fox's snarl.

"I don't care," Hariya said. "Become Hokage or whatever."

"I can't if I join your army!"

"It's not an army, it's a navy." Hariya rolled her eyes. "Honestly, you outer space ninjas can be so obtuse."

"Navy?"

"Yeah, so it's fine. Anyway, grab the fabric and let's go. Now we need the right colors. Blue, red, and white."

Naruto thought. "All we usually have in the village is orange, yellow, grey, purple, and black. A lot of people just wear fishnet."

"We can get those colors from the forest, though," Sakura said. "Not that I support this or anything." She gestured at her own...sack thing. "That's where this color came from."

"Okay, can I just ask a question?" Hariya said in a raised voice. "Why do you ninjas dress in the brightest, most obvious colors possible?"

"Sasuke wears blue," Naruto said. "Where do you think he got that?"

"The Uchiha's secret horde, I'm sure," Sakura sniffed.

Hariya glanced back and forth between them. "What's a Saskay?"

"Sasuke," Sakura breathed dreamily.

"Sasuke!" Naruto growled.

"Whatever, I do not care. Let's just get the colorful flowers from the forest."

"You got it!" Naruto beamed. "I'll help you make your flag. I never let an Adventure Friend down!"

"Great!" Hariya clapped her hands. "What are we looking for?"

Naruto thought. And kept thinking.

"I'll go with you," Sakura finally sighed. "I know which plants we need."

"That's Sakura for you!" Naruto said proudly, pinching the metal strap on his forehead. "She's read every book in the library twice."

Sakura started walking, waving her hand to motion them to follow."It was a small book. Most of the plants and animals aren't named or described. Shinobi are pragmatic."

Hariya skidded to a halt. "Wait a second," she gasped. "You're telling me there's a gigantic forest right outside the village that's full of plants and animals that no one's ever written down anything about?"

Sakura looked at her. "Yeah, so?"

Hariya's eyes were as round as saucers. "I'm going to be a naturalist!" she shrieked. "It's one of my dreams!"

"Yes!" Naruto shouted triumphantly, pumping his fists in the air. "What's a naturalist? Let's make this happen!"

"Get me pens! A notepad! A microscope! Measuring tools! An official Explorer Hat!"

Naruto and Sakura glanced at each other. "We have quills and blank scrolls?"

"It's a start!"

* * *

><p>Kakashi kept his face carefully blank as he waited in the Hokage's office. He sensed a presence by the door, although no one made a sound.<p>

Hokage-sama winked at him. Kakashi's face remained neutral. There was a knock at the door.

"Ah, that must the ANBU commander! Do come in!" Hokage-sama said loudly.

The door opened, and in walked a man carrying a folder and wearing a dog mask over his face. "Hokage-sama, thank you for this meeting. ANBU has urgent information to report regarding subjects K-9 and K-11."

"Don't you mean K-10?" Kakashi sighed. "Naruto and Sasuke have been getting along better and mostly staying out of trouble."

"Use the code names, the code names!" the ANBU commander winced.

"Actually, there's a K-11 now, Kakashi," Hokage-sama said, "And it concerns you, apparently."

"K-11?" Kakashi's impassive facade almost wavered. "There's another child in the village who has been assigned the maximum security threat level?"

Hokage-sama nodded. "And according to ANBU reports, she attached herself to K-9 immediately."

The ANBU commander coughed. "Perhaps if Hokage-sama had not assigned K-11 to the same living unit as K-9..."

Hokage-sama grimaced. "Yes, that was my mistake. If K-11 has a target, it is most likely Naruto. Ah, I mean, K-9." He hid his mouth behind his sleeve as the ANBU commander's body jerked at the security leak.

"Just what is this K-11?" Kakashi asked. "And when did it establish contact with my student?"

Hokage-sama nodded at the ANBU commander, who addressed Kakashi. "First of all, this is top secret."

"I was in ANBU too, I know the K-section security level and how to keep my mouth shut," Kakashi said in his dry voice. "Cut to the chase."

The ANBU commander handed Kakashi the folder, who flipped it open and skimmed the contents in an instant, although he pretended to read it for almost a minute. "Hariya Potter, codename K-11, appeared in our village just yesterday morning. She was picked up by your team in our forest."

"The little girl?" Kakashi finished pretending to read the contents of the folder and handed it back to the commander. "She's been assigned to the K-section?"

"She has no chakra."

"What?" Kakashi's voice betrayed genuine shock.

"Our top genjutsu interrogators worked her for hours, naturally. No response. They said it was as if she had no chakra to mold."

"If she doesn't have chakra, she's not alive. There must have been a seal or a jutsu of her own. A kekkai genkai that's not in our files."

"Her hands were tied, her eyes were covered, they gagged her mouth. There was no jutsu. No evidence of a seal anywhere. What kind of kekkai genkai can wipe out any trace of chakra?"

"Clearly there is one," Kakashi said. "Since you did not find any chakra, she is either dead or fooling you. Is she not dead? Then she is fooling you."

"That is why we assigned her the highest security threat," the commander said. Kakashi could see that he didn't like being talked down to by a former operative, but Kakashi's equilibrium was disturbed. Such a dangerous child was after Naruto. There could only be one reason why.

* * *

><p>The forest that met their vision beyond the gates of Konoha was vast and and green. With quick, practiced motions Naruto and Sakura leapt into the branches of two nearby trees.<p>

"Come on!" Naruto shouted. "Let's get going!"

"Get down here!" Hariya said. "I have to describe and draw every flora and fauna in this entire forest. That means being systematic."

"Oh, right," Naruto said. He scratched the back of his head. "I thought we were getting dyes or something?"

"First science, then conquest!"

"Oh, okay."

"I can't believe I turned down a date with Sasuke for this," Sakura muttered as she and Naruto clambered back down.

"Now you get to go on a date with me," Naruto said cheerfully. "Loads better, huh?" He ducked under a thrown rock.

"No fighting, you two," Hariya said absentmindedly. She knelt down and looked carefully at the grass in front of her. "Hmm. Yes. I do say. Indeed. This appears to be...grass. Green, with strains of yellow and brown. Approximately...yea high. It's natural habitat appears to be...the ground. I do believe this is a new discovery! Conscript Naruto, my quill and parchment!"

"You're holding them."

"Exactly!" Hariya quickly sketched a patch of grass, including helpful notes like 'this is the green part if I could do it in color,' with an arrow pointing at the 'leafy part.' "Now we just need to send this to the Royal Society!"

"I think we've already discovered grass," Sakura said dryly. "Trees too," she said as Hariya began to inspect the tree Naruto had just climbed. "You know what? I'll just go collect the dyes. I know where they are."

"I'll come with you!" Naruto said.

"No," Sakura and Hariya said simultaneously.

"You need to stay here and be my assistant," Hariya said. "Every naturalist has a faithful servant."

"No," Sakura said. "Just...no."

She quickly climbed a tree and hopped from branch to branch until she couldn't be seen. Naruto watched her go and smiled happily.

"One day, when I get really strong and everyone acknowledges me, I'm going to make her my girlfriend."

"I'm going to put her in a bunny suit," Hariya said. "I need a name for this species of bug here."

"Ninja ant."

Hariya pointed at another one. "Alien worm."

"Dream beetle."

"Magical root."

"Friendship bird."

"Discovery bunny."

Naruto peered at the brown lump. "I think that's just a rock."

"Discovery rock!"

Naruto watched her sketch the rock carefully, labeling made-up parts. "Being a naturalist is your dream, huh?"

"It's _one_ of my dreams," Hariya said, offended.

"My dream is to become Hokage and have the whole village acknowledge me," Naruto said. "So I have to train every day to become the strongest ninja I can be."

"You mean the sneakiest ninja."

"But it's hard," Naruto said, looking off into the distance. "I've never had any friends before. The whole village shunned me for as long as I can remember."

"That's a shame." Hariya poked through the dirt for more bugs.

"Yeah," Naruto sighed. "And my parents died when I was born, and I never really had much of a father figure unless you count Iruka-sensei, and for a while I thought he just thought I was a loser."

Now Hariya looked up with interest. "My parents died too! They were eaten by a crocodile after they crashed into it." She pointed at the lightning-shaped scar on her forehead. "That's how I got this. Ever since then, I had to live with my fat, imagination-hating aunt and uncle and cousin."

"Wow, I feel like we have so much in common," Naruto said earnestly. "My parents were killed by," his voice dropped, "The Nine Tailed Demon Fox!"

"Demon? Go on!"

Naruto's eyes flickered. "It's a terrible demon. It destroyed half of our entire village. It even killed my mother and father."

"Wow," Hariya said. "That's so coo—uh, terrible. Very sad."

Naruto didn't seem to hear. "My mother died in childbirth. And my father got infected by smallpox, dysentary, cholera, ergotism, influenza, leprosy, typhoid and measles all at once. He died instantly."  
>"I thought you said they were killed by a demon fox."<p>

"Those are the nine tails of the demon," Naruto said quietly. He leaned back and smiled, knotting his fingers behind his head. "Oh well! Stuff like that happens, you know. A lot of people lost their family. Iruka sensei lost his parents too. You know what's really odd about it? I thought the village was shunning me because I didn't have any parents or any talent, but it turns out the demon fox was sealed inside me." He patted his stomach proudly. "Right here. I keep it all locked up so the village doesn't have to suffer from another plague. Don't tell Sakura or Sasuke though! I think it'd make things weird. I feel like I can tell you though. You talk like you're from a different planet, so it's already weird. Ow!"

* * *

><p>"ANBU agents are tailing them," the ANBU commander said. "She appears to have befriended K-9 and one of his teammates."<p>

"Sakura," Kakashi murmured. Sasuke wasn't the type to make friends so quickly.

"She's made no overt threat yet," the commander continued. "Whatever kekkai genkai is hiding her chakra will have to be released before she can capture K-9, which will give us some warning."

"That's dangerous to rely on," Kakashi said. "You don't know when she could strike. We should eliminate her now."

"There is something both of you need to know," Hokage-sama said. "Our code breakers have intercepted new messages from the court of Richard. They appear to be communications between the court and their hidden village."

"The Sand?" Kakashi's eyes narrowed. "Why do I get the feeling I'm not going to like this?"

"We've only partially broken the code," Hokage-sama said. "But what we have translated speaks of a youth, a 'plant,' someone inserted into our village to spy, and most critically, a tailed beast."

"Naruto," Kakashi said grimly.

"K-9!" the ANBU commander said. "K-9!"

"But how do we know it's about someone coming here? Now?" Kakashi asked.

"Because it mentions the chunin exams as the time for the mission to be executed," Hokage-sama said. "My best guess is that the Sand intends to use the chunin exams as a cover to take the tailed beast while Konoha is distracted. Kakashi, is your team ready for the chunin exams?"

"No."

"All the better. Submit them. It will not be expected. It will mean that our attention is not torn between the exams and protecting the tailed beast. It will also deprive K-11 of plausible excuses to spend time with Naruto, who will be busy with the exams."

"The exams also put my team's life at risk," Kakashi said. "Including the one this maneuver is designed to protect. Let's remove K-11 now."

"Hariya Potter may not be who the message refers to," Hokage-sama said. "Nor, as we have seen, will interrogating her yield anything valuable. I believe that our best choice is to keep Naruto-sorry, K-9 within the confines of the chunin exam, keeping him within our focus and beyond our enemy's grasp."

Kakashi rubbed at where his skintight black mask covered his chin. "I don't like this, but if this is your order, I'll do it. I hope you don't mind if I accelerate their training."

Hokage-sama nodded. "We might as well develop the talents of K-9 and K-10 while we have them."

"And I want to see this K-11."

"I can take you to her," the ANBU commander said.

"Very well," Hokage-sama said. "Dismissed!"

* * *

><p>"So there's a magical fox demon with some kind of disease bomb?" Hariya was still trying to figure this out.<p>

Naruto shrugged. "I wasn't there. It's sealed inside me now, so we're safe. Although one time I got really mad when I thought Sasgay had died and I punched this chick so hard that she got leprosy and died."

"Huh. And why was the fox sealed inside you?"

Naruto turned his head to the side. "Uh. I never thought about that." He grabbed his forehead protector. "Probably because the village could see my inner talent and knew only I could control the beast!"

"And how's that been working out for you? Who sealed the fox in you, anyway?"

Naruto leapt to his feet. "That's easy. The Fourth Hokage! The most badass of all the Hokages, who are the most badass ninjas in the world. He was blond and awesome, and-"

"He was blond?"

"Yeah, why?"

"Naruto, stupid, there are like two blond people in the entire village that I've seen, and you're one of them. There are people with dark hair, blue hair, pink hair, purple hair, green hair, white hair, but not much blond hair. So let me get this straight: this guy, the only other blond guy in the village, happens to be right near you, a newborn baby, when he needs someone to seal a fox into."

"Ye-e-es. That sounds right."

"Naruto, I think the Fourth Hokage was your dad."

"Bwaaah?" Naruto almost fell over. "My dad? But I don't have a dad!"

"Of course you have a dad, moron," Hariya said. "Don't make me throw another rock at you. Your dad would have been blond. He died when you were a newborn baby. Only he would think to seal a fox into you. ...Naruto?"

"...%%%%%%" Naruto said.

"Okay then, that's enough mind blown for one day."

"My dad was the Hokage!" Naruto shouted. "It's in my blood! I'm going to become Hokage!"

"You can't become Hokage yet, Naruto," Sakura said, landing with a thump beside them. She handed a basket of flowers and roots to Hariya. "These are your dyes, and you can make a pale bleach from the roots."

"How?"

"Don't know."

"Hey, Sakura! I'm so glad to see you aga-"

"No."

"Okay! Why can't I become Hokage yet?"

"You're not even a chunin yet. Honestly, Naruto, don't you know anything?"

"So become a chunin," Hariya said. "Do the exam."

"Yeah!" Naruto said. "I'll become a chunin."

"We only just became genin," Sakura said as patiently as she could. "There's now way we're taking the chunin exams this year."

"Congratulations!" a voice said. "You're all taking the chunin exam this year!"

"Yes!" Naruto shouted.

"But...we're not ready!" Sakura shrieked.

"AHHHHH!" Hariya screamed as a man apparated right beside them. His face below his eyes was covered in a black skintight mask, and he had a metal strap like Naruto's that came over his left eye instead of covering his forehead. "WHO ARE YOU AND HOW'D YOU GET HERE?"

"Oh, Kakashi-sensei is always doing that," Naruto said. "You get used to it."

"Kakashi-sense, what do you mean we're taking the chunin exam this year? We only just became genin." Sakura looked terrified and ready to cry.

Kakashi's right eye closed as if he was smiling. "You're all so talented and special that you're ready anyway, along with the other teams of rookie genin to waylay suspicion!"

"Suspicion of what?"

"Huh? What?" Kakashi looked around wildly. "What'd I say?"

"Who are you!" Hariya demanded in a voice that squeaked with petulance. She felt embarrassed at having been surprised like that.

"I'm Kakashi, leader of Team Seven."

"That's my team," Naruto said.

Kakashi regarded her. "Who are you?"

"I'm Hariya Potter! I'm a sixth grader-well, I'm supposed to start sixth grade in the fall, but that was back on my home planet and it doesn't look like there is a sixth grade here. Not that it matters because I really should be in ninth grade. I live in the attic above the stairs at Number Four Privet Drive in Little Whinging, Surrey, and actually, if you're a professional ninja, then I'd like to talk to you about a few things, such as where can I get ninja powers and how come you guys never talked to me before and is this really an alien planet made of ninjas? Also I drew some pictures of stuff want to see?" She held up her sketches proudly. "I numbered and labeled all the parts, although I wasn't actually sure which parts were which or what they were called but I guess that's what discovering is. No one tells you, you just go and discover it! Anyway-mmph!"

Kakashi shoved a hand over her mouth. "You are so annoying. Never talk again. Please." He removed his hand, ignoring Hariya's indignant shrieks, and grabbed Naruto and Sakura by their collars. "Say bye!"

"Bye!" Naruto said just before Kakashi vanished with the two of them, leaving only a few leaves scattered in the wind.

* * *

><p>Hariya walked slowly back to her apartment, weighed down by her sketches and the basket of materials to be transformed into dyes, growing angrier by the minute. Finally she slumped down on the squeaky, hard bed, dropping her things on the floor. She stared at the page of sketches lying next to the blank parchment she would turn into the conquering Flag of Brittania, and then she flopped onto her back as her mind finally began to catch up with everything that had happened.<p>

She had traveled through space to another planet. Or maybe to another dimension. Wherever she was, it wasn't Britain anymore. Except everyone kept saying it was, but whatever universal translator was letting her speak to these people was probably just turning their word for their country into her word for her country.

This was a planet or a dimension or whatever of ninjas. Ninjas! Who could clone themselves and had ice powers and evil demons.

This world was mostly unexplored, and, judging by Naruto's failed attempts to explain what jutsus were, not very well understood.

She would discover it. She would understand it. She would become the world's coolest ninja and have all the best friends and go on the most exciting adventures. She would conquer this land in the name of Britannia and rule with the power of science.

Because this was a world built for her. She didn't know where that thought came from or why she thought it. But she knew that it felt right.

She should mail the sketches to the Royal Society right away. No time to waste! She scampered over to Naruto's room and knocked, but after several tries there was no answer, so, more disappointed than she was willing to admit, she went out with the sketches alone.

Konoha was primitive, she realized as she walked along the long main road. The houses seemed to be made of wood and thatch, and the clothes were fairly simple. In fact, it was only the ninja who dressed in a modern if totally bizarre way. You could tell who was a ninja instantly by the way they dressed, which didn't make much sense when she thought about it.

An amazing smell infiltrated her nose; the scent of cooking meat filled her head and brought drool to her lips. She hadn't realized how hungry she was.

She ran over to the meat stand. "One meat, please."

"Two monies," the man next to the grill said.

"I have 73 pence and two quid."

"What the hell are those?"

"I have no idea."

A hand reached out and dropped two coins onto the stand. "Here. Two monies. Give her what she wants." The man shrugged and handed Hariya a skewer of meat, who gasped happily and grabbed it, tearing off a chunk into her mouth instantly.

"Fank 'oo," she said. Then she looked at who had paid for her meal and nearly choked.

"'Oor 'or'eous!" she managed, hacking and couging. "Fo hod!"

The tall boy looked mature and distant, though he couldn't have been more than a couple of years older than her. "Yeah, bye."

She watched his amazing butt shake in his white shorts as he walked away. Then she hastily swallowed the rest of the meat and ran after him. He ignored her as she hopped behind him, giggling with excitement, and then she latched onto his butt with both hands.

"What the hell? Get off me!" he shouted as she squeezed with all her might.

"They're just perfect! And so big. Stories like this one about ninjas and adventure and stuff just need perverted scenes like this, don't you think?"

"What the hell are you talking about?" he cried, trying to pull away.

"This is great," Hariya said as she felt his fantastic butt. "I'll let you join my club and become a chunin with me and Naruto because of these."

"You're a genin?" With surprising strength and speed, he broke her grip and turned to face her, looking ready for battle. "Hey, you're that spy we caught!"

"Here we go again," Hariya groaned. "I'm not a spy. Hokage Sama cleared me himself. I live in Naruto's apartment now. I'm Hariya Potter. Sixth grade, read, write, and do arithmetic at a ninth grade level, haven't I said this like a dozen times already? Any friend of Naruto is a friend of mine. Anyone with a butt that great is my slave."

"What?"

"Nothing. So what's your name?"

"Uchiha Sasuke." He smirked like it was a big deal. Several nearby women screamed and fainted onto the ground.

"So, Uchiha—Uchi? yes, Uchi—do you want to see my drawings?" She showed him the sketches.

"I don't get it," Uchi said after perusing them. "Why are you detailing these bugs and plants?"

"It's what explorers do. I'm on the frontier of science."

"What's science?"

"_What's_ science? What's _science_? How could you never have heard of science before?"

"Is it a jutsu?"

"It's where all the jutsus come from. It's how jutsus work."

He seemed skeptical. "So your secret technique is science jutsu, huh? Pretty bold of you to share that with other genin. Where's your forehead protector? What village are you from?"

"Oh, Uchi, you—"

"Don't call me that."

"Oh, Chihaha—"

"Call me Sasuke."

The nerve of him! "You want me to call you by your last name? But friends don't call each other by their last names."

"Sasuke is my first name."

"But it comes last."

"Yes."

"What are you, American? That makes no sense."

"What's American?"

"People from outer space."

"What's outer space?"

Hariya pointed up. He craned his neck to see. "It's a village in the cloud? I heard there was a village called that, but I didn't think—"

"Higher. Past the clouds. Past the sky."

He raised an eyebrow. "Now you're just messing with me."

"Am not! I'm from space and so are you, Mr. Alien Ninja Sasuke."

"I'm from down here. Anyway, look, I should get going. My team leader wants me. Nice to meet you, Ms. Science Ninja. Are you going to be in the chunin exams this year?"

"Of course."

He smirked again. Several more girls nearby fainted next to their already comatose friends. "Then I'll see you there. No need to get too friendly with the competition."

"Wait!" she said as he began to walk away.

He glanced back at her. "Yeah?"

"Thanks for the meat."

"No problem."

"Why'd you do it anyway?"

"I can recognize an orphan from a mile away. You're hardly subtle about it." And with that he left.

"Hmph!" she said to herself. "I didn't even say a thing about any alligator and he goes making assumptions." She looked down at her sketches. "No more distractions. Time to find...the post office!"

* * *

><p><em>Several Weeks Later<em>

The servant adjusted his glasses and stepped carefully around the princes and dukes and earls and their wives as the members of the Royal Society talked gaily and ate extremely expensive food off of tiny silver plates.

"Your Highness King Richard the Third," the servant bowed, "If I may be pardoned, you have a message addressed to the head of the Royal Society from Konohagakure."

The king finished licking his sausage-like fingers and snatched the package from the servant. "Ooooh, look everyone, I have a present!" He turned the package around, examining it. "Hmmm," he said in frustration as it didn't open. He tried gnawing at a corner of it. "It's not working!"

"Let me try," said the thinly mustachioed Prince Charles. He drew his sword. "Hiyaaa!" He smacked the package out of Richard's hand, sending it flying across the room.

"Charles!" Richard whined. "Now it's all the way over there. And still not open!"

"I've got it!" King Henry said, bending down to pick it up. "So...close!" he grunted as he waved his hands, struggling to bend farther than his enormous belly and thick fur coat permitted. "Grrr...ack!" he grunted in surprise as he fell over on top of the package.

"Help!" he cried, waddling on his back. "Help me up!"

"Don't be silly, Henry. We can't help you, obviously," Duke Jasper sneered. "We're nobles, we don't help people." Several servants rushed over and, heaving desperately, managed to pull Henry upright.

"What's in the package!" Richard whined. "What's in the package!"

A servant picked it up and opened it, earning a burst of applause from the assembled royalty. "You can't hire good help like that just anywhere," Richard said smugly.

"It appears to be drawings of plants and animals," the servant said. "With descriptions."

"Pictures!" Richard gasped, and all the royals gathered around to see the pictures of the plants and animals as the servant held them up one by one. "Give them voices!" someone demanded, and different servants held up various animals and plants and acted out a short play.

"I say, get off my carefully labeled foliage!" a tree said in a high-pitched voice.

"Don't fall on me!" the discovery rock trembled, to much laughter. After it ended, the royals demanded an encore, and after a second show it was all finally over and the royals returned to their party, swapping their favorite lines from the play, debating whether the first performance was better than the second, and snacking on the "Horse dovers King Richard got straight from France."

The pictures and accompanying notes being forgotten by all, no one noticed when they disappeared.

* * *

><p>Kabuto laid the sketches and notes in front of Orochimaru, who looked at him impatiently. "Don't play games with me, Kabuto. What is this?"<p>

"An offer, if I'm not mistaken," Kabuto said. He pushed his glasses up with his middle finger. "These were sent to the Royal Society from someone within Konoha."

"So? They're all buffoons. Why are you showing me this?"

"I had never seen anything like this before," Kabuto said. "I admit, I stole them at first simply out of curiosity. But after looking at them, I realized. Someone from within Konoha is offering us information."

"...I see. These seemingly meaningless drawings are a code. They're saying that whoever did these can get us information about Konoha's defenses, and they know how to conceal what they're doing."

"It's brilliant," Kabuto said. "And they must have known that I would see it. You'll notice that the kabutomushi is called 'dream beetle.' That has to be a reference to the genjutsu I was under. That's how I first understood what this was. No one else would see it, practically ensuring that if this landed in anyone's hands, it would be mine."

"Why are you so happy?" Orochimaru said sharply. "Our security has been compromised. Who sent this?"

"That's what I want to know," Kabuto breathed. "This is pure genius."

"Konoha is trying to lure us into a trap."

"I don't think so. See here? 'Ninja ant.' Its pincers are labeled 'suckers.'"

Orochimaru's eyes widened. "The Aburame clan!"

"Exactly. That's key information on a secret clan technique of Konoha's. Those are jealously guarded. Konoha wouldn't risk letting a secret like that get out. The sender is telling us that they have important information and that they're trustworthy—or at least that they're not working for Konoha."

"It has to be Akatsuki. Or Jiraiya, that bastard. Someone suspects us."

"I think it's an offer to you, not to the Sand," Kabuto said. "I don't think we've been discovered. I looked and looked and couldn't find a reference to the Sand at all. The sender has done such a good job that something as important as that wouldn't be left out. They don't know about our plan."

"Or they just want us to think that."

"Maybe."

"We'll kill this person when we're done with him."

"Obviously," Kabuto said. "But I think we should pursue this—cautiously. A double agent who knows Konoha's defenses could prove invaluable."

"So pursue it then. When you infiltrate the chunin exams, find this person, extract all the information, especially what and how they know about us. Then dispose of them."

Kabuto bowed. "As you wish, Orochimaru-sama."


	4. The Chunin Exam Begins

The Chunin exams began with an absence of fanfare. It was a _ninja_ village, after all.

Hariya watched grumpily by the stairs as Naruto, Sakura, and the irrepressibly sexy Sasuke strolled into the room packed full of ninja from around the hidden villages of Great Britain.

"Friends of yours?" Kabuto pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose. Hariya wished he would just stick them to his nose with chakra or something. "Want to see their cards?"

Hariya hated the way Kabuto noticed everything. No, _everyone_ noticed everything. In the ninja world children began training at a young age to develop a hypersensitive awareness of their surroundings. It made them all seem like bloody mind readers.

It had been a lot cooler reading about mentalism than having it actually tried on you and _working_.

"I thought we were friends," Hariya muttered. "But they disappeared for weeks and I never saw them again until now."

Kabuto rifled through his stack of info cards. "Let's see…Naruto Uzumaki, Uchiha Sasuke, Haruno Sakura. Only Sasuke looks to be any good. Oh, wow, they went on an A-rank mission. I guess that's Kakashi for you…and they're about to die."

And indeed, Naruto was shouting at one of the other genin, totally oblivious to the hateful stares he earned from the dozens of other frightened, nervous children waiting to take the test, their violent tendencies brought out and honed by years of abusive training and horrible trauma, set on edge and more tense then they had ever been as they faced a test to determine their future none of them knew anything about.

"Excuse me, Hariya, Tsurugi." Kabuto disappeared faster than Hariya's eyes could blink, but by now she knew to look behind Naruto as Kabuto reappeared. He said it was only quick movement, not teleportation, but Hariya couldn't spot the difference.

What did it say about her that she no longer found superhuman feats of strength and speed astonishing?

She glanced at Tsurugi, Kabuto's teammate. He kept his mouth hidden behind a cloth and rarely spoke. The maniacal way his eyes stared at her out of a pair of round glasses creeped her out.

"MY NAME IS UZUMAKI NARUTO!"

Hariya gripped the bannister and looked down at where the blond-haired demonic child of the Fourth Hokage was making an enemy of everyone in the room.

"And I'm won't lose to you bastards!" Naruto shouted. "You got that?"

In the embarrassed silence that followed, Hariya cupped her hands to her mouth.

"Yes, you will!"

Naruto looked up, and now the attention, all the pent-up tension and aggression was on her. "You and you," she pointed at Sakura, "deserted your commanding officer and your post! The punishment will be a hundred lashes tied to the mast! And double deck-swabbing duty for a month! Hey, Sasuke, you're super hot, why don't you ever say hi?"

* * *

><p>Two weeks spent in the company of Hariya Potter had only done so much to inure Kabuto to her insanity. Kabuto had spent his whole life among ninjas, spying, lying, plotting, building layers of confusion, uncertainty, and falsehood around walls of genjutus to cover up the smallest of truths, but even he couldn't begin to guess at the deep game Hariya Potter was playing.<p>

Now as the hundred-odd genin in the room prepared to turn on her, Kabuto fingered a kunai knife in his pouch, unsure of whether to leap to her defense or if Hariya had a plan.

"Look, I get that you guys are busy being ninja or whatever," Hariya said, apparently oblivious to the ninjas in the crowd beginning to move her way, "But duty is duty. I expect you to follow all of my orders during this test."

She leaned over the bannister. "Know why? Because the British Navy is the best damn navy in the world! The training you get and the unit you serve in is better prepared to handle the terrors of this wide ocean than any other! Alone the storm will rip you apart, but together we will weather it from within this mighty steel hull!"

A low murmuring buzzed up. The navy? Was this part of the test? _Steel_ ships?

Three ninjas slipped through the crowd toward Hariya, and there was nothing Kabuto could do about it, not while he was pretending to be a mere genin—

_Hariya…so that's your plan. Tsurugi, help me out!_

Hariya waved at Sasuke, and that's when the three-man team made their move. One leaped into the air and flung a knife at her, which Hariya's rapidly waving hand deflected away from her cheek, a gesture of practiced innocence turned into the perfect defense.

Kabuto sucked in breath. _She's good._ He threw his own knife, pinning the ninja to the wall by his clothes. "Keep away from my teammate, bastard!"

The ninja's teammates, one male, with his face wrapped in bandages and the other female with long hair, came at Hariya from either side. Tsurugi put a substitution jutsu on Hariya, switching her with one of his own knives just before the long-haired ninja's needles slammed into her head. Dislocating his own joints, Tsurugi wrapped his entire body around the girl, ready to snap her neck. Bandage Face didn't stop, flicking a shrunken at Tsurugi's exposed face and using the time it bought to switch trajectories to Hariya's new location. He swept back his cloak, revealing a metallic right arm.

"You'll be disqualified, idiot!"

The door exploded, and in the settling smoke stood a score of adult ninja, chunin at the least. At their fore was a man in a dark cap, two long scars running across his face.

Bandage Face's claw stopped an inch from Hariya's face. "Why's that?"

"You need to be in a three-man team to enter the test." The man in the dark cap nodded at where Tsurugi had nearly snapped the girl's neck. "Fight all you like, I don't care how many of you little bastards die. But the instant you're disqualified, you're no longer here under protection of the Third Treaty. You will be kindly asked to leave the village, and you had better do so in a hurry." The dark man smiled grimly. "I know the men who will be after you. They…will not be kind."

Slowly, Bandage Face lowered his hand. Kabuto cursed internally when he noticed the sign of the Sound village on his forehead protector. Tsurugi glanced his way, and Kabuto nodded. Slowly Tsurugi unwound from the girl's body, and she stumbled away, joining Bandage Face on the way down.

Kabuto breathed a sigh of relief. For once, the way he acted mirrored the way he felt, and he body-flickered his way up the stairs in a rage. He clapped Tsurugi on the shoulder but glared at Hariya.

"Listen, you can't keep doing stuff like that," he said in a low voice. "We won't be able to pass the test if we make enemies of everyone here!"

To his shock and horror, Hariya's eyes wobbled as if she were about to cry. "Ohmygosh that was so scary! Thank you guys so much! I thought I was going to dieeeeeeeeee!"

She began to sob. Loud, whiny gasps escaped her convulsing body as tears ran down her cheeks. The rest of the ninjas stared up at her in bafflement.

"Uh…uh, okay, it's okay," Kabuto wrapped his arms around her, drawing her into his chest. "Uh, everything's going to be fine." He lowered his voice. "Don't you think you're taking this act a bit far?"

She pushed him away. "Kabuto, you jerk! You're always like this, nice one minute and saying something completely weird the next!"

"I—you—"

"Shut the hell up!" the man in the dark cap roared. "You! What are you crying for? You're a Konoha ninja? Where is your forehead protector?"

"I'm an adventurer, explorer, naturalist, scientist, conquerer, and inventor," Hariya sniffed. "I'm not a ninja."

The man stared at her for a moment, and then his eyes slid off her as if she had ceased existing. "Listen up, I'm Ibiki, the proctor for the Chunin Selection Exam's first test. Looks like you're all ready to go, so let's get started. Come up here to get a tab assigning your seat to you. No two members of the same team will be permitted to sit next to each other. We will then hand out the exams." One of the chunin next to Ibiki rustled a thick stack of papers.

"What?" Naruto shrieked. "A paper test?"

Hariya wiped the damp off her red cheeks and sniffed. "Oh, that's easy. Don't worry you two, I read, write, and do math at a ninth-grade level."


	5. The First Exam

Hariya confidently jotted her name down at the top of the paper. Test-taking was kind of her thing back on Earth, and she couldn't help but simper at the glowering Kabuto. Naruto at the front was clearly in panic mode. There were always people like that who psyched themselves out before the test even started. A fitting punishment for a deserter.

Hariya barely listened as Ibiki explained the rules. All that would matter would be getting the answers right, and that's exactly what she planned to do.

"Begin!" Ibiki said, and Hariya looked to the first question.

**Ninja Question 1 (a)**: You are in a room surrounded by shinobi poised to kill. Your chakras are at 50%, and you have fourteen shuriken and eight kunai knives. How many shinobi, excluding yourself, must be in a room in order for the probability to be greater than 1/2 that at least two of them have the same birthday? Include leap years.

**Ninja Question 1 (b)**: Using the number of shinobi you got from part (a), what is the most effective attack vector you can use to take as many shinobi down with you assuming you only have access to the Shadow Clone Jutsu, the Transformation Jutsu, and the Substitution Jutsu. Show your work.

Hariya stared at the question. Slowly her eyes slid down to question 2.

_Test-Taking Strategy #15: Skip hard problems and come back to them later._

**Ninja Question 2**: A shuriken with mass M collides elastically with a stationary target with mass m. If M m, then it is possible for M to bounce directly backwards. However, if M m, then there is a maximum angle of deflection of M. Find this angle.

Hariya's eyes moved down to the next question. They kept moving, went up and to the right, and slid down again. Her hands began to tremble.

_Test-Taking Strategy #1: Don't panic._

Hariya forced herself to take long, slow breaths. Don't panic, don't panic. There must be a way to solve these problems. She peeked again at Question 3.

She looked away.

Hariya had never so much as received a mark lower than an 'A' in her entire life. And now she faced the prospect of getting an…an…

_An F._

Behind her, someone slapped the table. "Ye bastards, hoo mony fowk ur supposed tae pass thes test anyway?"

"Aye, this test be unfair, laddie," another ninja said.

"Shut up and sit down!" Ibiki barked. "Did you bloody idiots think the chunin exams would be easy? If I haven't gotten rid of half of you by the end of the first exam, I'm not bloody well doing my job, am I, you barmy nancies?"

So other people were struggling too. Hariya focused her watering eyes on Kabuto at the table in front of her. His left hand was visible, tapping on the table so softly it wasn't even making a noise. There was, she realized, not a steady rhythm but a pattern to the way his hand fell. It fell like _slow fast slow fast_ pause _fast fast fast fast_ pause _fast_ pause _fast_ pause _slow_ pause _slow_.

It was oddly soothing.

Along the walls the chunin lounged, watching them carefully and taking notes. Were they examining the exam? Watching for cheating?

They were an oddly dressed bunch, wearing all manner of bandages, headgear, and odd cloaks. Maybe ninja concealed themselves by dressing so garishly they all blended together. One noticed her watching them and winked at her.

_Tap_. Kabuto's hand made a noise for the first time as it hit the table. Was there a message in the way his hand fell?

Hariya wasn't the only one who couldn't answer the questions. Some of the ninjas, like Naruto, were gazing at the test in despair or pathetically trying to peek at the test of the person sitting next to them. Only three, Sakura and two others, were actually writing anything. Most of the assembled genin of Great Britain were making weird patterns with their hands that reminded her of dumb games the girls at Hariya's school sometimes played.

Thinking of home didn't hurt. Hariya didn't miss Earth, school, or the Dursleys. She did miss her books. The ninja library didn't have any good science fiction.

A kunai knife sliced into the test of a genin sitting in front of her and to the right.

"You messed up five times," a chunin said. "Your team fails."

Shock turned to anger and defeat. The three genin slowly stood up and left.

_Tap_. The rhythm of Kabuto's falling hand changed. At the end of the pattern there was a longer pause than usual, as if he was waiting for a response, and then the gentle _fast slow fast slow_ resumed.

There were ten questions on the test. Nine were presented normally, but for the tenth all that was written, "This question will be revealed 45 minutes after the test begins. Listen closely to the examiner before answering."

Hariya put her hope in the tenth question.

The clock ticked down. More genin were caught. Some shouted, some tried to argue, but they all left in the end. Over a quarter of the genin that had started the test were gone as the minute hand on the clock inched toward the 9. Kabuto's hand continued to fall in different patterns. Hariya wanted to shout at him that she didn't know what he was trying to say.

The minute hand reached 9.

"We will now begin the tenth question," Ibiki said. "For this question, there is a new rule. You must choose whether or not to answer the tenth question."

"What happens if we choose not to take it?" a kunoichi asked.

"Then you fail along with your teammates," Ibiki said. "But there is another rule. If you choose to take the tenth question and get the wrong answer, you will lose the right to participate in a Chunin Selection Exam ever again."

Gasps and murmurs ran through the remaining genin. One stood up. "You can't be serious! We know there are genin here who failed the exam before and are taking it again!"

Ibiki only chuckled. "Too bad for you guys that I'm in charge of the first exam this year. But I am giving you a way out. If you're not confident, you can choose not to answer the question and try again next year."

He waited while that sunk in. "Those of you who do not wish to answer the tenth question, raise your hand now. You and your teammates will leave."

Ibiki waited. Ten seconds. Twenty seconds. A genin stood up. "I—I won't take it! I'm sorry, guys."

"Numbers, 56, 112, 133 are disqualified."

Another genin raised his hand. Then another. And a fourth.

Hariya gripped her blank test, trembling at the unfairness of it all. First the test questions were _completely_ impossible, _and_ you fail if your teammates fail, and now if you got this final question wrong you weren't ever allowed to take the test again, which just defeated the whole _point_ of a test.

The paper crumpled in her hands. Hariya Potter began to rise.

* * *

><p>Without a doubt, Hariya Potter was the most subtle and frightening ninja Kabuto had ever met. As she began to speak, he remembered why.<p>

"Kabuto, back from another mission, eh?" the guard at the gate to Konoha held out his hand for Kabuto to grasp.

"C-rank," Kabuto said. "Didn't go so well, I'm afraid. Come on, Tsurugi, Akado."

Once they were inside the village, Kabuto turned to his teammates. "You guys go meet with the jonin. My friend asked me to help her deal with a rat in her apartment."

They left, no questions asked. The "jonin" meant Orochimaru-sama himself, of course, wearing the stolen face of a now-dead Leaf jonin, and "Deal with a rat" meant Orochimaru wanted him to hunt someone down.

Kabuto wasn't worried about finding the spy. The code the informant had left in the "scientific notes" was brilliantly sublet, invisible to the unsuspecting and yet sure to wind up in Kabuto's hands. He was confident that something similar would be waiting for him.

A knocking sound from one of the apartments attracted his attention. A young girl, no older than eleven or twelve, kicked furiously at the door to one of the rooms looking out onto the main street.

"Open up, Naruto!" she demanded, kicking the door again. "I know you have to be in there sometime!"

Kabuto's eyes narrowed. He knew all the genin of Konoha. He didn't recognize this one.

In a flash he was behind her. "Need help with anything?"

She jumped like she had never even seen a body-flicker jutsu before. "How long have you been standing there?"

"Oh, I just got here, actually—"

"You creep, sneaking up on little girls. Is that like some kind of sick pleasure for you? Your hair looks stupid."

A friendly smile Kabuto had spent years perfecting spread itself easily across his face. "Hey, I'm a genin too." He tapped his forehead protector that bore the sign of the Leaf in the center. "I just didn't recognize you, that's all."

"Oh." She seemed to relax slightly. "I'm not a genin. I'm a sixth-grader. My name is Hariya Potter."

"I'm Kabuto. Nice to meet you. Can I help you open this door?"

She kicked at it again. "My dumb friend-slash-seaman Naruto is never around anymore. He was helping me catalog Konoha's forests."

Kabuto's pulse quickened. Bingo. He marveled at the brilliant subtlety that could so easily be mistaken for the innocent ramblings of an insane child. Kabuto had spent his life wearing a succession of masks. In this 'Hariya Potter' he felt he had found a kindred spirit. "I could help you with that. I know a lot about certain kinds of beetles."

Her eyes lit up. "Really? Hey, want to join my navy?"

An offer to defect? Did she not understand that Kabuto was already working for Orochimaru-sama against the Leaf? "I've always been a man of the sea."

"Good! Then come help me with the flag."

"Flag?" Kabuto followed her into her room. _Room 237? Does she know about the murder?_

Hariya gestured at a blank canvas laying in the center of her room. Several buckets of plants and roots sat by it. "I was making a flag, but I don't know how to get the colors out of the plants. Can you help me?"

"A flag? What for?"

"To conquer Konoha," she said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Kabuto's breath caught. Was this a trap? A test? Both? "Sounds like a fun game—"

"It's not a game. I take this very seriously."

Kabuto knelt by the white canvas. Slowly he reached to his pocket and withdrew a kunai knife. "So you want to be Queen of Britain, is that it?"

"No." She seemed bemused. "I just thought I'd conquer this whole planet in the name of Great Britain so long as I'm here."

What did that mean? Konoha _was_ a part of Great Britain.

For the first time in his life, Kabuto felt like he wasn't keeping up at a contest of subterfuge.

_Orochimaru-sama, ally or enemy, this person is very dangerous._

Hariya's foot tapped impatiently. "Can you help me get the colors on right or not?"

Any genin knew how to draw the colors out of the flowers and spread them over a surface with chakra. She couldn't really need his help. At least this code he could understand. She was trying to "draw out" his "true colors." But could he trust her?

"It's fine if you don't know how," she said. "I can always find someone else."

There's no way she could have known that he would have returned to Konoha where he did, when he did. The body of an eleven year-old girl was probably her real one, then, and while it wasn't unheard-of for shinobi even younger than her to be effective spies and powerful fighters, Kabuto had never heard of an eleven year-old girl stronger than himself.

"Show me how you want the pattern for the flag," he said, letting the knife slip back into his pocket. She sketched a diagram and laid it by the canvas. Kabuto arranged the plants. He concentrated his chakra into the tips of his fingers and slowly, carefully, he began to draw the color out of a bunch of bright red flowers.

"Wow!" Hariya gasped. "You get more out of each one than I thought." As the color bled onto the canvas, the flowers faded and turned grey. Kabuto didn't answer, concentrating on mimicking the bizarre pattern she had drawn. Was there another clue in that? Undoubtedly. He would have to take a closer look at it later. And just what did she mean by "sixth-grader?" There was too much about this "Hariya Potter" that he didn't understand.

He finished drawing her flag and stood back. She clapped and clutched at his arm, and instantly he was standing on the far wall, a knife drawn.

For a moment her eyes were focused on the space he had just occupied, and then her jaw dropped when she saw him standing on the wall. "How are you doing that? And how did you teleport like that?"

_What's she talking about now? These are basic jutsus!_ "It's not teleportation, just really fast movement."

"Oh, like Kakashi-sensei!"

Kabuto cursed under his breath. In just one move she had gauged the real extent of his power. _If I die because of this mistake, I deserve it._

"Anyway, get off my wall, please. You're making it dirty."

Kabuto dropped to the floor. He put the knife away, chuckling embarrassedly. "I'm sorry, Hariya. I suppose I'm still a little jumpy after my last mission." She probably saw through the act like she saw through everything, but it was worth maintaining for anyone watching.

"Well, thanks for coloring my flag for me. I'll have to find somewhere suitable to plant it. Say, you're a genin, right?"

"That's right."

"I need to be in the chunin exams or whatever so I can kick Naruto's butt. Can I be on your team?"

There it was again—that unparalleled subtlety contrasted with idiot bluntness. Kabuto couldn't keep up anymore, but he knew better than to turn her down. He wasn't sure if it was a request or an order at this point. "Sure, why not? I'll tell my sensei. He can get you into the test even if you were late to sign up."

"Yay! Thanks, Kabuto, you're the best!"

She headed toward the door. "Come and buy me food, okay? We can talk about beetles and stuff over meat."

"I'd love to." Behind her, knowing how dangerous it was, Kabuto made the seals for his most powerful genjutsu. He needed to know. Concentrating his chakra, he set his hands on the back of her head.

Nothing happened.

"Kabuto!" She turned and smacked his hand away. "You creep, you can't just touch my hair before we've even been on our first date. Keep your hands to yourself, Mr. Pervert." She tossed her hair. "I know it's hard to resist, isn't it?" Then she winked at him and sashayed out the door.

_Not even Orochimaru-sama could have blocked that jutsu if I had my hands on his head,_ Kabuto thought as he followed her helplessly out into the sunlight. _But she didn't even break the illusion. It just…didn't work._

Sweat dripped down Kabuto's forehead. He was now teammates and friends with the most dangerous eleven year-old girl in the world. Whatever kekkai genkai she had broke all the rules.

She grabbed his wrist. "Come on, slowpoke. My favorite meat stand is just ahead. Only two monies for a meat!"

* * *

><p>And now the most subtle, complicated, mysterious genin in the world began to speak. "Listen here, Ibiki, if that is your real name. I don't like the way you're conducting this test! First of all," she held up the test and rustled it, "the questions are way too hard. I don't mean to brag, but I <em>do<em> read, write, and do math at a ninth-grade level, thank you very much, and these questions are simply impossible. And none of them are even multiple choice! What is this, the ninja SATs?"

Ibiki stared. "What's an essaytee?"

"And another thing: what's up with this tenth question business? It's almost like you want people to fail. I mean, how important can this question be that if you get it wrong, you're not allowed to become a chunin again ever? I mean, that's just crazy. Crazy!"

Naruto's hand slapped down on the table. "Yeah, and I'm going to become Hokage. You can't scare me! I'll take on any challenge because that's my ninja way! Believe it!"

"Well said, Seaman Naruto!"

"Aye-aye, Captain!"

"Commodore!"

"Huh?"

"Sit down!" Ibiki barked, but the damage was done, the mood destroyed. All the tension dissipated, leaving him with a room full of confused genin. After a minute had passed with nobody raising their hand, Ibiki sighed.

"Congratulations. All of you have passed the first exam."


	6. The Forest of Death

"Congratulations. All of you have passed the first exam."

"Huh?" was the general reaction of the remaining genin.

"You see," Ibiki intoned as if he had been waiting to impart this set of profound and meaningful knowledge that would change the lives of the young ninjas here forever, "the true test—"

"Boom!" Hariya said. "I never fail."

"The true—the true test—"

"Hey, Kabuto. Kabu. Told you. Ninth grade level right here."

"A ninja faces many dangers, but—"

"That was the lamest test I've ever taken. None of it was even multiple choice!"

Something burst through the window, scattering glass everywhere. From the center of the writing mass four hooks shot out, spreading open a tall banner that read, "Welcome to the Test of Death!1!"

"Anko," Ibiki said.

The kunoichi smirked. "Did I spoil the mood, Ibiki?"

"Nope. Right on time."

"Arright!" Naruto exclaimed. "Second test!"

* * *

><p>Anko shimmied her hands in front of the gate that separated the village from the looming trees that filled the forest. "Welcome to the forest…of death! This test is very simple. Every team here gets a black scroll or a white scroll. Everyone team that acquires both a black and white scroll and makes it to the tower in the center of the forest with all of their team members together and alive within the time limit of five days passes. Every team that doesn't, fails."<p>

"So we're fighting each other," Sakura said.

"That's right, you adorable pink-haired thing. And this is a ninja battle. You're allowed to kill."

"Finally!" a number of genin said.

"Guid oan ye, missie. Aam achin' tae gie some exercise."

"Kill?" Hariya tugged Kabuto's sleeve. "I think the universal translator isn't working right. What's she mean by 'kill?'"

"Hariya, I respect and admire your myriad talents as a ninja," Kabuto murmured, "But I really need you to drop the shit and focus. This test is dangerous even for me. Do you understand? Even for me."

Hariya stared at him. Then she thumped herself on the side of the head. "Darned universal translator isn't working."

"The forest is full of wild animals that will probably kill you," Anko said. Hariya slapped herself on the ear again. "You'll have to survive while battling your fellow genin for a set of scrolls. There's only one rule: no peeking at the contents of the scroll until you make it to the tower.

"What happens if we do?" someone asked.

Anko smiled mirthlessly. "There'll be a nasty surprise waiting for anyone who tries that. Ok, time's a-wasting. Line up and get your scrolls. One per team."

"Naruto," Hariya said as the teams shuffled awkwardly into line. "Let's team up."

"Ok," Naruto said. "We should form a group with all the Konoha genin. I'll be Hokage—"

"And I'll be Commodore!"

"Hariya!" Kabuto caught her by the arm and dragged her out of line. "Tsurugi, get the scroll."

"Kabuto!" Hariya squawked, slapping at his forearm as the older genin pulled her away from the rest of the genin in a manner that reminded her far too much of Uncle Vernon. "What are you doing?"

Kabuto knelt down but kept his grip on her. "Listen to me very carefully, Hariya. I mean no disrespect, none at all. It is my greatest desire to finish your project of the taxonomy of all the flora and fauna in Great Britain. But," he licked his lips, praying that his guesses were right, "I do not dream anymore." Her eyebrows went up in a look of total bafflement, but he pressed on. "Our jonin master freed me of such delusions. Now I have adopted his dreams."

"What are you _talking_ about?"

"His dream is for us to make it through this forest without joining with that group."

"Why?"

Kabuto smiled his perfectly disarming, friendly smile. "That Uchiha Sasuke is the top rookie genin in Konoha this year. This test wouldn't be much of a challenge if we teamed up with him."

"Fine! Let go of me!"

He released her hand. She turned away in a huff and strode away.

"Hariya, wait—"

"Don't talk to me, Mr. Helmet. I'm mad at you! Why don't you just go into that forest and get eaten by a wild animal for all I care?"

She stomped away, muttering to herself in a high-pitched voice that occasionally squeaked. Kabuto rubbed at his temple. "But I…." _Need to know your abilities before the test. You can't keep holding your cards this close to your chest._

"…All this work I do for this team," Hariya sniffed loudly. "I ought to build a spaceship and go home. See if anyone cares!"

Tsurugi came with the scroll tucked in his pouch. He gave Hariya one of his wide-eyed stares that always lasted just a beat too long.

"I don't know either," Kabuto said before Tsurugi could say anything.

"All the teams will be entering from different gates around the forest," Anko said cheerfully. "Get to your assigned gates now! And try not to die."

Hariya pointedly ignored Kabuto when he tried to talk to her at the gate. Finally the gong rang, and the gates opened. Kabuto and Tsurugi instantly body-flickered into the tree branches above and scanned their surroundings.

Hariya was still on the ground staring at the patch of space Kabuto had recently occupied.

_Shit! What the hell—_"Hariya!" Kabuto thumped the tree, getting her attention. "Come on!"

"How did you get up there?" Hariya shouted.

"Quiet! Hariya, this isn't—" Kabuto flickered in front of her, grabbed her and was back on the tree branch beside Tsurugi in an instant. "Hariya! I don't care how powerful you are; you need to take this seriously!"

"I—ah!" She stepped back, wavering on the edge of the branch, but his grip held her tightly. She clutched onto his arm and balanced herself. "Did we just teleport?"

He slapped a hand over her mouth. "Not so loud. It was a flicker."

"Mmph!"

He peeled his hand away. "Quietly now."

Hariya breathed deeply, still holding onto his arm like a vise. "Kabuto, this is freaky. I need to go down."

Kabuto stared at her. Then it clicked. "You're not a ninja."

"I've said that like a hundred times!"

"You can't do any jutsu—you can't even move through the forest at a decent pace."

She glared at him, but her death grip on his arm didn't loosen. "No, I don't have any super magical powers, ok? I'm totally normal." Her eyes flickered. "Except—nothing."

"Except what? You can't hold things back on a dangerous mission."

"Except nothing!" She let go of his arm, breathing slowly, spreading her arms out for balance like she didn't even have a finely honed sense of balance from years of intense training.

"So," Kabuto said, trying to control his face and failing for the first time in a decade, "What was that business with the notes you sent to the Royal Society?"

Her eyes lit up. "They made it? I wasn't sure—"

"Hariya!"

"It's exactly what it looks like. Notes on the plants and animals of Konoha's forest. I'm an explorer. A naturalist."

"Ninja Jesus," Kabuto muttered. "Tsurugi, we're moving." He grabbed Hariya and they were off, Hariya dragging on his shoulder like a broken medipack.

"We'll find a place to lay low," Kabuto said as they leaped across the tree branches. "Our—" he remembered Hariya, no longer sure of what he could reveal in front of her. "It's a good strategy to hide out for a few days and pick off one of the weaker teams. Some of the rookie genin from Konoha seem easy."

"We need to get another scroll too," Tsurugi said.

"I'll get one myself," Kabuto said. "I'll bring back half a dozen."

They jumped through the trees for almost another hour. Every time Kabuto spotted a sign of a team nearby, they changed directions, fleeing the possibility of conflict like the Hokage designing a treaty. Throughout it all, Hariya was completely silent.

As the sun began to set they scaled down a tall tree trunk. Kabuto set Hariya down and started making seals with his hands.

"Tsurugi, keep a hand on the trunk of this tree. The roots run all throughout this forest. They'll sense any danger approaching well before you do. I'll set traps and get the scroll. What kind do we need?"

"Heaven scroll."

"Stay here, Hariya. Do what Tsurugi says. I'll be back soon."

Kabuto vanished. Hariya shivered.

Time passed. Within half an hour the forest had gone from bright to nearly dark. Before the end of the hour, it was so dark that she could barely make out Tsurugi sitting a few feet away, one hand resting on the trunk of the tree. No moon or stars shone through the dense foliage of the treetops.

The temperature dropped. Tsurugi never spoke a word. She could tell by the shape of his glasses that he was looking at her. She leaned against a rock, clutched her necklace, and waited.

A scream pierced the night, and then two more in quick succession, more ragged as if the scream was choked out around blood.

"Not Kabuto," Tsurugi said. "If it was Kabuto, they wouldn't get to scream."

Hariya told herself she was shivering from the cold. She squeezed the necklace so tightly it cut into the palm of her hand. Explosions sounded through the night, fireballs lit up the darkness. Occasionally the ground itself quaked.

"Not Kabuto," Tsurugi only said whenever something disturbed the night's tranquility.

Then he tensed, pressing his hand tight against the tree trunk. "Someone—"

"Good work, Tsurugi," Kabuto said, laying a hand on the genin's shoulder. "Your reflexes have improved a lot."

"You're back," Hariya said. It was so dark she could only see him by the tall shape he made against the tree trunk.

"I am." Something rustled inside his jacket. "Here, Tsurugi. Hold onto these three. That way you'll have two sets of scrolls and so will I."

She strained her eyes to see him sit against the tree. "Go to sleep, Tsurugi. I'll take watch for a few hours."

Tsurugi didn't make a sound as he walked a few meters away and lay down on the dirt as if it wasn't even cold, let alone comfortable.

After a few minutes of silence, something rustled from Kabuto's direction as if he was shifting his legs. "Come here, Hariya."

Slowly Hariya got to her feet. Hands outstretched to feel her way, she touched the rough bark of the tree and slid down it, resting beside Kabuto, her arms hugging her knees tight to her chest.

"Cold?" he asked.

She nodded. Then she realized he couldn't see, but before she could say anything he pressed something smooth and round into her hand. "Swallow this. It'll help your body produce heat."

She did with some difficulty. Faster than she expected she stopped needing to shiver.

"Better?"

"Hungry."

A moment of silence. "Right, you're not a ninja. I'll catch you breakfast in the morning."

Hariya didn't answer. Kabuto sighed. "Everything you told me was true, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"Not a brilliant, indecipherable code?"

"Why would it be?" She didn't have the energy to snap.

"Then why didn't the genjutsu work?"

"I barely even know what that is."

"The first time we met I tried to put a genjutsu on you. It failed like—like you don't even have chakra."

"I don't know."

"Be honest."

"I don't know."

Something firm and warm pressed against the center of her chest. Kabuto's hand, she realized belatedly.

"Please tell me again, Hariya. Why didn't the genjutsu work?"

"Kabuto!"

"Please."

There was something in his voice, a note of urgency Hariya had never heard before. "I don't know."

The hand withdrew. "I see. Why did you join the chunin exam?"

"What is this, 21 questions? Why're you here?"

"That," Kabuto said, "Is a story for another day."

"I just thought it sounded fun," Hariya said. "I was excited to meet a real ninja for the first time. Naruto was really friendly and…I didn't realize it would be like this."

"You're really not from Konoha," Kabuto said.

"I told you, I'm an alien. You're an alien." Silence. "You don't believe me."

"I believe you. May I ask how you got here?"

Hariya hesitated. Then she took the golden necklace from around her neck and handed it to Kabuto.

"I spun the circle in the middle of the medallion a few times," Hariya said, "And I ended up here."

"I see."

Kabuto held it for a moment. When he gave it back to her, his hand trembled.

"You OK, Kabu?"

"I have never met anyone as honest as you," Kabuto said. "Go to sleep, Hariya. Do not cry, for there will be breakfast. We will spend a few days in this forest. Perhaps you can become something of a ninja in that time."


	7. Hariya's Ninja Way?

Hariya woke to the smell of fish grilling. There was a crick in her back, and her head hurt from laying against the trunk of the tree, but she ignored it in favor of the fish.

She stretched and made her way over to where Tsurugi sat by the fire. Fish spitted on long wooden sticks crackled over the flames, spitting juices that had Hariya's mouth watering.

"Where's Kabuto?" she yawned.

Tsurugi stared at her.

"Uh—"

"Watching Sasuke." Tsurugi continued to stare.

"Ok. I'm going to take one of these." She took the stick by the base and pulled it out of the fire. The black skin resisted at first but yielded with an incredibly satisfying crunch. The inside was sweet and moist and quite possibly the most delicious thing she had ever eaten, even though it burned the inside of her mouth.

"Ahh! Hot!"

Tsurugi stared at her. "Blow on it."

Hariya didn't listen, tearing off another hunk of fish with her teeth. There was bone this time, little ones in the meat that she choked on and a bigger skeleton that broke off when she bit into it.

"There's scales in my teeth," Hariya commented. "You eating that one?"

Tsurugi stared at her. "Kabuto said they're for you. Eat, gain strength. We are waiting here. Maybe three days."

Hariya grabbed the second fish. "How come? Ahh! This one's hotter!"

"It was on the flame for longer."

Hariya was burying the fish bones when Kabuto appeared by the big tree. He looked tired, dirt smudging his silver glasses, and his pale ponytail seemed the worse for wear, but he clapped Tsurugi on the shoulder with enthusiasm. "Any trouble?"

"You cleared everyone out last night."

"True. Extinguish the fire anyway. Good breakfast, Hariya?"

She finished covering the fish bones with dirt. She hadn't ever thought of her food as having been _alive_ before. "Yeah. Tsurugi said we're staying put for three days instead of going to the center where the tower is. How come?"

"We have a mission. Tsurugi, finish damping the fire and get out of here. They're two kilometers fifty degrees east of north from here."

When Tsurugi had left, Kabuto called her over. "We have three days to turn you into a ninja."

"I already tried it with Naruto," Hariya said. "We did shadow clones. It didn't work."

"Shadow clones is pretty advanced stuff. Let's start with something more basic. Do you know what chakra is?"

"Naruto mentioned it. He ran out after doing shadow clones."

Kabuto held two fingers straight up in front of his mouth. "Chakra is the energy in all living things. It—"

"Oh, _energy_. Darned universal translator kept outputting 'chakra.' That probably doesn't even mean anything to you when I say it. Chakra. Chakra. What does that sound like to you?"

"Hariya, please focus. Chakra is the life-energy that separates organisms from inanimate objects—"

"Oh, you mean electricity. I wonder if there's a way I can manually edit the translator."

Kabuto sighed. "Just watch." He stood in front of the tree and breathed deeply, still holding two fingers in front of his mouth. Then he walked up the side of the trunk.

"Not bad, huh?" Kabuto smiled down at her from where he stood underneath a tree branch. "With—"

"Ohmygod_ you can walk upside-down_!"

"Hariya," Kabuto said. "Rule No. 1 of the ninja way is this: Don't make noise, or someone will kill you."

"Right, sorry. _Ohmygodteachmethat._"

"By exerting a conscious control over his chakra, a ninja can do many things. Charka can push, pull, deflect, and rotate. Want to run faster? Add the force of chakra to your feet. Want to move silently? Mask your steps with chakra. Want to stick to the underside of a tree? Cling to it with chakra. I can even keep my glasses from falling off with chakra, but it's a very advanced technique and I only use it in battle."

"How do I get this chakra stuff?"

"Everyone is born with it." Kabuto's feet separated from the bottom of the tree branch. Hariya's scream died in her throat as Kabuto landed right-side-up on the ground, unharmed. "Chakra in my head to speed my reflexes. Chakra below me to soften my fall. Well, it takes a lot of practice to get this good."

"So let's start already!"

Kabuto had her sit against the base of the tree and sit cross-legged, with one foot resting top of her knee. It felt weird, but when Hariya said as much, Kabuto tugged her foot further up her knee. She kept her mouth shut after that.

Next he showed her how to make a seal. "This is the most basic one." He held two fingers in front of his face like he had before.

"What do I need to do that for?"

"Close your eyes." She glared at him suspiciously but complied. "Now wiggle your fingers."

"…Okay."

"Even though you can't see what your fingers are doing, can't you feel them moving in your head. Doesn't it tingle?"

"Hey, it does," Hariya laughed. "That's weird."

"So it is with chakra. Your fingers set the pattern easier for your body then any other part. Takes a really good ninja to do a jutsu with only one hand or no seals at all. You can open your eyes now."

"What's a jutsu?"

"Things like shadow clones."

"_Teach me that._"

Kabuto pressed his glasses up with his middle finger. "Uh, that's harder to explain. For now, let's just draw your chakra out. Close your eyes again. Focus. Feel the energy inside of your stomach, swirling like an ocean. Draw it out through your blood vessels to all four of your limbs and up into your head. Stretch it all the way to your fingertips. Now—"

"What energy? In my stomach? What are you talking about?"

"Or try your throat or your heart. You should feel a dense spiral of energy there."

"Nope." His warm hand pressed against her neck. "Kabuto, quit doing that!"

"Just concentrate. Draw your energy out. …Are you?"

"Yes!"

His hand drew back, leaving a cold spot on her neck. "I didn't feel any chakra. You don't have any chakra!"

She heard the sound of something falling and opened her eyes. Kabuto sat on the ground, leaning back, his face pale. "You don't have any chakra! You're a monster!"

"Well, excuse me for having an alien biology." Hariya stood up furiously, brushing dirt off her clothes. "Naruto was a lot nicer about it."

"That's why the genjutsu didn't work!" Kabuto bit a nail. "That's bloody useful."

"Whatever," Hariya said loudly. "I'm bored. This is the worst camping trip ever."

Kabuto stood as well. "What are you doing here? Why are you in the Chunin Exam?"

"To become a chunin, duh. Then I'll get to tell Naruto what to do even if he doesn't want to be in my navy."

"Fitting that a kid with all the chakra is friends with a girl who has none."

"So what am I supposed to do?" Hariya demanded. "I'm stuck in the forest with you and Mr. Creepy Stare for three days."

"You're the one who asked to be on my team! What did you think being a ninja meant?"

"I thought it meant shadow clones and bossing Naruto around!"

Kabuto's mouth fell open. "That's…that's true, isn't it? You actually thought being a ninja was some kind of…of game!"

"No one said it wasn't!"

Kabuto's face turned almost as red as Uncle Vernon's did whenever he had to climb the stairs to Hariya's attic. "I…you…DUCK!"

Faster than she could see he bore her to the ground. Something thudded in the tree where her head had just been. Kabuto hauled her up and pressed her against the other side of the tree. She grabbed at him, but he was already gone. Seconds later, Hariya stumbled and fell to her knees as something exploded. Someone screamed, a thick, gurgling wet sound as if the victim were choking on blood.

Hariya covered her ears. It wasn't enough to block the sound of something like a stream of gas whistling through the air. A wave of heat passed over her so intense that the ends of the hairs on her arms curled.

There was the sound a person might make if they were smashed head-first into the ground from twenty meters up and choked on their own tongue shortly before their spine was driven through their brain.

Something about that _ticked Hariya off_. And when Hariya got angry, she channeled that into her Crotch-Kicking Foot.

Hariya's Crotch-Kicking Foot was the nuclear bomb of playground disputes. Discovered at the tender young age of five-and-a-half during a dispute over possession of a football, Hariya's Crotch-Rocket Nightmare soon grew into the uncrowned champion of the recess battle circuit. She had even on one memorable occasion put a severe delay on her cousin Dudley's development into adulthood with a well-aimed blow to the nether region, which he had been too humiliated and frightened to report to her aunt and uncle.

Kabuto had a habit of appearing behind people. But her back was to a tree. That meant—

Black flickered at the edge of her vision. Without thought, without any control or deliberation, through years of trained reflex supported by a billion years of cutthroat evolutionary selection, Hariya's Crotch-Crushing Catastrophe exploded into the ninja's groin at an appreciable fraction of the speed of light.

He collapsed, making a sort of high-pitched _ee-ee-ee_.

Kabuto appeared beside him not even a second later, holding a bloody knife. His clothes were singed, and soot marked his face around his bloodshot eyes. "Not bad," he grinned, panting. "Forget ninjutsu. I'll make you into a great taijutsu specialist in three days."

He noticed her staring at the knife. "Oh, sorry." He hid it behind his back. "I got distracted there, but no harm done. You took out a shinobi!"

Hariya didn't look directly at the black-cloaked boy lying on the ground. He couldn't have been much older than her, maybe two or three years. "I should've kicked _you_," Hariya said.

Kabuto pushed his glasses up. "I'm sorry, Hariya, really. That's what happens in a battle with ninjas."

"Did you…are his friends, I mean—"

"They're alive," Kabuto said. "It's tricky killing shinobi from other villages on a mission like this. Oh, they say we're allowed to, but it's really better not to…."

Hariya nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Her knees were wobbling for some reason. The world tilted backwards as she landed painfully on the ground.

Kabuto was beside her, his concerned face slipping in and out of focus like a television set during a thunderstorm. He was asking her something, but she couldn't make it out. She shook her head. He held something in front of her. A round ball. She opened her mouth and swallowed it. Her body felt heavy then, and just before her vision turned dark, she saw his hands glowing.

She dreamed of her home planet, but it wasn't a good dream. It wasn't a bad dream, either. It was just…there, hanging in space, resting on nothing. She considered it.

Hariya woke to the smell of fish. Tsurugi knelt by the fire, grilling fish on wooden spits over a fire that cast more light than the sun as the afternoon died and evening blossomed.

She felt…refreshed, like she had gotten the best night's sleep of her life. The feeling of purity made her unafraid to look around, but she didn't see any bodies. Kabuto must have tied them up somewhere after taking their scroll.

Tsurugi handed her a spit when she sat down by him. She took it wordlessly and let it cool before taking a bite. It tasted better when it didn't scald her tongue, although she wasn't as hungry as she had been that morning.

Tsurugi stared at her. "Kabuto says you were attacked. He says he got two of them but you beat the third with taijutsu."

"Tsurugi, you're real creepy, you know that?" Hariya said conversationally, sucking the last of the meet off the fish bones. "What's taijutsu?"

"Physical arts. Ninjutsu is ninja arts. Genjutsu is illusions."

"How come you always stare like that?"

"I don't stare."

Kabuto's hand landed on his shoulder. "Yes, you do. Hariya, how are you feeling?"

"Better." She pointed to the fish roasting on the far end of the fire. "Hand me that one, please."

He did, and he also handed her a small tin cup. "You need to drink too. They're still sleeping, Tsurugi, but I don't like the look of things. The sound nin are scouting the situation out. I don't know what—_he_ is thinking, but be on your guard. Get moving!"

Tsurugi vanished. Kabuto sat beside her and gazed at the fire. Hariya had learned yesterday that the temperature dropped quickly at night. It kept the front of her warm, but she didn't want to ask Kabuto for another one of his pills or for him to scoot closer. Instead, she pressed against him. He didn't seem to mind. It was a long time before Tsurugi came back and Kabuto left again.

When he was around, Kabuto spent his time teaching Hariya taijutsu, or, as she kept calling it, "ninja fisticuffs." An accident that left most of Hariya's right thumb hanging grotesquely like the limp end of a roll of tape kept Kabuto from teaching her anything more about weapons, but his glowing hands had her good as new and even cleared up a nagging ache in her wrist that she sometimes got from writing too much fanfiction about Elizabeth Brown and Clarke Abel. It was called _Stars of Love in Ancient China_ and she had never told anyone about it before, but the buggy universal translator didn't seem to even be able to communicate the idea to Kabuto.

No more attacks came, and while Kabuto's face grew more troubled as the last day approached, Hariya had fun learning to sneak and dodge and learn a strike other than a crotch-rocket. She was almost disappointed when the last day came.

"We're leaving," Kabuto said. "Tsurugi, got the scrolls? Stay a distance away and keep an eye on Sasuke's team. Hariya, ready?"

"I smell bad," Hariya said. "Will there be a bath?"

"A ninja cleans himself in the bathtub of his enemy while the enemy is brushing his teeth." He hoisted her over his shoulder and took off for the nearest tree with Tsurugi disappearing in the same direction they always did. A few minutes later he returned, sounding panicked.

"They're about to open the scroll!"

Kabuto _accelerated_, and Hariya realized he had only been traveling at a fraction of the speed he was really capable of. The wind turned into a battering ram, the trees compressed together, and Kabuto landed in the middle of the dirt with a loud _smack_.

"You should't do that," Kabuto said. "Did you forget the rules?"

"Kabuto!" a familiar voice cried. "Hariya!"

Hariya fell off Kabuto's shoulder in a stunned heap. She shook her head before getting her bearings. They were on the ground again, thank Gravity, and a familiar blond face was grinning at her.

"You made it this far!" He gripped his forehead protector proudly, even though his dumb orange jacket made him obvious from a hundred miles away.

Hariya tried to comb her hair into some semblance of order. "That was fasssst," she whispered.

"I wouldn't bother," Sakura smirked. Had her shockingly pink hair always been that short? It was even shorter than the length of her forehead now.

"Naruto," Kabut sighed, "If you had opened that scroll, you'd be disqualified from becoming a chunin."

"No way!" Naruto's eyes bugged out. "Good thing you stopped me."

"I told you, idiot," Sakura said.

Something blue and sexy flashed into existence between Kabuto and the other genin.

"Oh," Sasuke said. He swept back his raven-black hair. "Kabuto, what are you doing here?"

"Sasuke!" Hariya and Sakura squealed.

"Sasuke," Naruto grumbled.

"…Sasuke," Kabuto said. "I was stopping Naruto from disqualifying you three by opening the scroll."

"Idiot," Sasuke said. Sakura nodded firmly. "Speaking of scrolls, there aren't many teams left. Do you have two yet?"

Tsurugi hopped down from the treetops and landed by Kabuto. He focused Sasuke in his intense, over-long stare. "We have four heaven scrolls and four earth scrolls."

"Dang!" Naruto said. "We only have an earth scroll."

"Better hurry up then." Kabuto turned away. "Come on, guys, let's get to the tower."

"Wait," Sasuke said. He pointed a knife at Tsurugi. "Fight me."

"Sasuke!" Naruto grabbed him. "He just saved us!"

"There might not be any teams left," Sakura said. "Spare us a scroll, Kabuto. You only need one of each."

"No need." Sasuke tensed himself.

To Hariya's surprise, Kabuto chuckled. "Sasuke, you're a hopeless ninja. If you want to fight my teammate, attack him from behind. There's no honor in a battle like this. But your teammate has a better idea. We're not so weak ourselves. Why not bargain?"

"I already heard a speech like that a few days ago," Sasuke growled.

"Eh?" Kabuto looked completely befuddled. 'What are you talking about?"

"I got eaten by a snake!" Naruto said. "But I exploded it with my shadow clones!"

"Whoa!" Hariya said.

"I broke a guy's arms," Sakura said.

"I got knocked out," Sasuke said. Somehow he managed to make it sound cool.

Tsurugi stared at Sasuke. "Should I?"

"Why not? She's right, we have plenty to spare. We can walk to the tower together as well in case there are any teams still left."

But the walk to the tower in the center of the forest proved uneventful. Hariya and Naruto stayed in the back, commiserating and swapping war stories. Sakura fell back with them, complaining about the way Tsurugi stared at her.

"We're here," Kabuto said.

The tower turned out to be some kind of gigantic building that looked a little bit like Hariya's apartment if it was compressed into more of a cone. A dozen different doors ran around the base.

"We should take different ones," Sasuke said.

"Thanks for the scroll," Sakura said.

But Naruto grabbed her hand. "Hariya! I'm going to become Hokage and you're going to become Navykage!"

"It's called Admiral, actually."

"We'll get to the top together, an oath as fellow shinobi. First step, we become chunin."

Hariya gripped his hand tightly. "It's a promise, and I never break my promises. See you on the other side."

They parted ways. Naruto and his team disappeared through one set of doors. Hariya led Kabuto and Tsurugi through another into a spacious, round room bare of furniture.

Kabuto took a light and a dark scroll from Tsurugi. "The tests are different each year, but they follow some patterns. If I'm not mistaken, this is probably a summoning jutsu.

"Hariya!" he snapped. Hariya jerked at the sudden sound. "Listen to me very carefully. The life of a ninja is one of subtlety and complex battles of intelligence and guesswork. Like any game where chance plays a role, sometimes you have to bluff if you want to make it to the next round of life."

Before she could answer, he threw the scrolls toward the other end of the room. Before they reached the ground smoke was rising out of them like big poofs of dust caught in a very localized whirlwind. In the middle of it appeared a tall, pale man with long dark hair and unnaturally slanted eyes. From the way he stood, he seemed totally at ease with his surroundings, an anaconda resting in a tree surveying its jungle with lazy hunger.

"Orochimaru-sama, I have the data," Kabuto said. "It's even better than we expected."

"Coooool," Hariya said. "Did you just teleport?"


	8. The K-Section

"Coooool," Hariya said. "Did you just teleport?"

The pale man regarded her. "And just who are you?"

"I'm Hariya Potter! I'm in the sixth grade—or at least, I was due to start sixth grade come the fall, but it doesn't seem like that's going to happen, does it? Not that it really matters since I read, write, and do math at a ninth-grade level. On the other hand, it's not like I could solve any of those problems on the first test." She sniffed. "Wasn't even any multiple choice."

"Kabuto," the pale man said, "I am beginning to develop an understanding of your reports."

Kabuto handed the man one of the cards he used to store data on shinobi. "The target exceeded all expectations, Orochimaru-sama."

"To business, hm?" The pale man, Orochimaru-sama, gazed impassively at the card. A tongue slithered out of his mouth. At first she thought he was licking his lips, but it kept going…

…And going…

Until it kissed the surface of the card and withdrew. Orochimaru-sama stuffed the card in the pocket of his vest and turned to Hariya.

"I am Orichimaru," he said. "One of the three Sannin, rightful Hokage of Konohagakure, and friend of snakes everywhere. And you are Hariya Potter, sixth grade." His eyes widened. "Look me in the eyes!"

Hariya did. Orochimaru's eyes were big, dark circles. They seemed to spiral somehow, hypnotic and piercing.

The silence dragged on.

"Are you going to say something?" Hariya demanded.

Orochimaru licked his lips with that thick, disgusting tongue of his. "I see. My servant Kabuto—"

"Who are you?" Hariya said. "What are you doing here?"

"I am acting as a jounin of Konoha," Orochimaru said languidly. "You understand. Now—"

"So we passed the second test? Only it's been a long five days, and I haven't taken a bath or anything so I'd appreciate it if we could hurry this up."

Orochimaru's snakelike eyes glanced at Kabuto, who shrugged helplessly. "I understand well your talent for subterfuge and trickery, Hariya Sixth Grade. I am a simple man. You chose to contact me. What can you offer me, and what do you want in return?"

"I want to be a chunin," Hariya said. "Plus I need to finish my book, _Organic Taxonomy on the Planet of Ninjas_." She rubbed her chin. "Oh, and I guess I should finish up conquering Konoha. Already got the flag and everything."

"I can help you with that," Orochimaru said. "I can give you all the power you need. You want control over the animals of the forest? If I give you a special bite right now, they'll flock to you at your command."

"What? Ew, no. It's just about being an explorer."

"Are you very ssssure? I can—"

"You're a big creeper. You're even way creepier than Tsurugi or Kabuto, and they are like super big mega creeps."

Orochimaru paused. "I am going to steal your body, you little—"

Kabuto interrupted. "Orochimaru-sama, Hariya's subtleties are beyond even your…_extensive_ imagination. Perhaps we should discuss matters in private afterward?"

"Very well, I suppose I might as well do my job. Congratulations-on-passing-the-last-exam-be-like-heaven-and-earth-head-through-this-door."

Hariya didn't miss a second in walking past him. She opened the door and glanced back. As Kabuto passed by Orochimaru, the pale man tapped the side of his thin, flat nose, and his tongue flicked from side to side in the air. If tongues could laugh, Hariya decided, that's how they would do it.

The door led to the inside of a large arena. What must have been the other passing genin were assembled in lines in front of Hokage-sama in his weird rhombus-shaped hat, Ibiki, Anko, Kakashi-jerk, and a bunch of other people Hariya didn't recognize. Orochimaru joined them, wearing a leaf symbol over his forehead.

Hariya pushed her way around some guy with a big fat gourd on his back through to where Naruto and Sakura formed a loose circle around Sasuke. Naruto barely glanced up at Hariya when she joined them. His face was grim, and Sakura looked to be on the verge of tears.

"It's fine," Sasuke was saying. He kept his hand pressed to the back of his neck. "Just don't say a word about it!"

"Don't be an idiot," Naruto said. "You're scaring Sakura, you can't mold chakra—"

"Shut up!"

"What's wrong?" Hariya asked.

"Mind your own business!"

"It's cool, we're orphan buddies." Hariya grabbed his hand and pulled it away. Three commas meeting at the their heads formed a conspicuous tattoo where the back of his neck curved into his left shoulder. "Ew, what is that?"

"Don't touch it!" He covered it with his hand again.

"It's killing you," Sakura whispered.

"Kabuto!" Hariya whirled around, saw Kabuto's white ponytail over the shorter genin moving slowly. "Kabuto, come here. My friend is sick!"

Kabuto looked impassively at the tattoo. "What's this?"

"A weird snake guy bit him, and he nearly dies every time he uses ninjutsu," Naruto said.

"Kabuto can fix him," Hariya said. "I cut off most of my thumb. He fixed it up good as new." She wiggled her right thumb to demonstrate.

"I cannot," Kabuto said.

"But—" Hariya began.

"No. You ask too much."

"Congratulations!" Anko called suddenly, making Hariya jump. The fishnet-wearing exhibitionist seemed as energetic as ever. Compared to her, the remaining genin who had survived a life-or-death battle in a forest for five days were worn out, tired and very, very smelly.

"You've all passed the second exam," Anko said. "Truth be told, I thought that there'd be less than half the current number of teams remaining. We sure went easy on them this year, eh, Ibiki?"

"Just get to the point." Ibiki adjusted his dark cap uncomfortably.

"Fine, geez, just trying to make conversation. Here to explain the third exam is your very own, the one, the only…Hoooookage!"

Hokage-sama got out of his chair. He puffed on a pipe as he die so. It was weirdly comforting to see something so familiarly British on this bizarre planet.

"Before I explain the third exam," Hokage-sama said, "I want to discuss the nature and purpose of the Chunin Exams. Namely, why do all the nations of Great Britain take the test together?"

He let the question settle in before answering it. "I tell you this because those of you who will be moving on need to understand the nature of the third exam. The Chunin Exam is a replacement for war among the nations of Great Britain.

"For centuries the great families of England, Scotland and Wales vied for ultimate control over the throne of Great Britain. War and disunity ravaged the combined defenses of our nations. We suffered terrible losses at the hands of the traitorous French and the unspeakably horrible Irish samurai."

Hariya noticed the genin around her shuddering. Were the Irish really that bad?

"In order to prevent the battles that left Great Britain defenseless," Hokage-sama continued, "the Chunin Exams were instituted."

"What the hell does this test have to do with any old throne?" Naruto demanded. "I just want to become a chunin so I can be Hokage. Believe it!"

"And if you succeed at the third exam, you will become a chunin," Hokage-sama said evenly. "But this test has another side where shinobi fight for the prestige of their nations. Many wealthy, powerful and influential men and women will be watching the third exam. From your performances they will learn which nations are strong and which are weak. Money and influence will flow out of the latter into the former.

"A shinobi's true strength is revealed only in life-or-death battles. That, simply, is the third exam. A series of fights to the finish. To the very end."

Hariya shivered. It had happened too many times for her to blame it on a malfunction in the universal translator her necklace came with. She noticed the three ninja who had attacked her before the first exam standing at the far end. One of them had both of his arms in slings. She looked away before any of them could notice her gaze.

"I will say it again," Hokage-sama said. "The third exam pits you all in life-or-death battles with the fate of your nations riding on your shoulders."

"Ah dornt caur abit mah nation," said the red-haired boy with the gourd. "Jist teel us abit th' third exam awreddy."

"Actually," coughed a sickly-looking ninja standing by Ibiki and Anko, "as referee for the third exam, I'll explain." Hokage-sama nodded at him, and the man stepped forward.

"I'm Gekkou Hayate," he coughed. "My friends call me Hayate, or they would if I had any. Uh." He paused. "Uh, so, before we get to the exam, there's a preliminary." He had dark bags under his eyes as if he hadn't slept for days. Hariya liked him.

"A preliminary?" Sakura asked. "Why can't we move straight on to the third exam?"

"There's, uh, the first two exams were a little too easy, it seems." He glanced sideways at Anko and Ibiki. "We need to reduce the number of people here before the third exam, so we're having a preliminary test."

"Uh, first of all," he coughed. "at this point, you're all judged as individuals, not as teams. So if anyone is feeling weak or tired, or," he coughed, "Sick, you can choose to quit without penalizing your teammates. So if, uh, anyone wants to stop here, just raise your hand."

"Ha!" Naruto said. "It's a trick! Ibiki already tried that."

"Uh, no," Hayate said. "Just it makes it easier if you quit now."

_Should I quit?_

She didn't want to be a chunin, not really. It was one thing playing a game with Naruto, but she wasn't a ninja.

More to the point, if she fought any of these people, she would die.

Hariya had never thought about death before. When she tried, she found that she didn't want to ever again.

Slowly, trembling, Hariya's hand began to rise.

Kabuto caught it. "Stand firm, Hariya. You made a promise."

"But I can't—"

"You are very honest. Stay that way."

Hariya followed Kabuto's gaze to Orochimaru, whose smiling face betrayed nothing.

"Anyone?" Hayate coughed. "No? You sure? Oh, well. I was hoping someone would. The, uh, preliminary will just be a series of elimination matches between two ninjas at a time. Since there's 21 of you, I, uh, I guess one of you will get a bye.

"Uh, there are basically no rules. I'll stop the fight if it looks like someone can't fight back. No point in having to spend more money on shipping corpses back home. Heh." He waited. "Uh, so if everyone could go up there to the stands and we'll announce the first two fighters."

* * *

><p><em>Not twenty minutes earlier<em>

The pungent, bitter smell of the Hokage's tobacco filled the office room. Ibiki stood against a wall while Hayate slouched in a chair.

Anko rubbed the curse seal on her back. "Thank you, Lord Hokage. It feels much better now."

A chunin walked into the room carrying a folder. He handed it to Anko. "The last of the teams have passed or been eliminated."

"Let me see." Anko winced. "Seven teams passed? I'm losing my touch."

"Who passed?" The hokage sounded interested.

"A team from the Sand," Anko read off the list. "A Sound team."

"Hm." Hokage-sama stroked his beard. "Scotland and that fledgling upstart nation. We should not pass up the opportunity to learn more about them."

"And…wow! Five teams from Konoha!"

Hokage-sama choked on his pipe. "Which teams?"

"It looks like…every team with a K-section member."

Ibiki slipped, banging against the wall. Even Hayate straightened up, some of the tiredness leaving his eyes.

"It looks like…all four teams that are composed of K-section genin," Anko continued.

"Except for Sakura?" Hokage-sama asked.

"Obviously. Sakura is useless."

"Why did we even put all the K-section genin together?" Hokage-sama mused. "Wait, what is the fifth team? There's only four teams with K-section members."

"Team Kabuto-Tsurugi-Hariya Potter."

The pipe fell out of Hokage-sama's hand and clattered on the floor. "Hariya Potter? But…how?" he spluttered. "Ibiki! Why didn't you remove her from the exam? The whole point was to separate her from the other K-section members, especially Naruto!"

Ibiki righted himself. His forehead was damp. Anko had never seen Ibiki sweat before. "I—I thought that you knew about her joining Kabuto's team, so I…."

"She analyzed our system cooly from a distance and outmaneuvered us all." Hokage-sama sat down heavily. He massaged his temples, trying to think. "Hariya Potter is even more dangerous than we expected."

"It sounds like we'll need a preliminary," Hayate said. "We could match her with that Hyuuga bastard. K-1."

"No…no," Hokage-sama said slowly. "She's too dangerous. We can't afford to lose him."

"Uh…K-1?" The chunin who had brought in the folder wilted as the attention of the three high-ranking ninja and the Hokage snapped on him.

"Great, another security leak," Hokage-sama muttered. "Might as well tell him before we kill him."

"It's fine, really, I don't need to know," the chunin squeaked.

"A review isn't bad," Hayate coughed. "We're going to have to be dealing with these brats soon."

"Vigilance from you, Hayate?" Ibiki sounded amused.

"When it comes to the K-section, even I'm creeped out. These kids are all unofficial S-Rank threats until they become adults. After that, depending how things go, they might become official S-Rank threats." He took the folder from Anko.

"K-1: Hyuga Neji. They say he bears the blood of the Hyuga Clan more thickly than anyone, but he was put in the K-section on the day of his birth due to the incident with Kumogakure."

"It's not just raw power," Anko said, "but how much threat they may pose to the village."

Hayate nodded. "Hyuga Neji is the most obvious source of instability between the Hyuga clan and the Leaf. We don't want another Uchiha situation.

"K-2: Akimichi Choji. After the founder of their clan, King Akimichi, flattened the entire village under his enormous girth, all children born in the line of the secret techniques of the Akimichi clan are put in the K-section until we can be certain of their loyalty. That Choji has struggled to win the approval of his peers has kept him on the list longer than is normal.

"K-3: Yamanaka Ino. Body stealing and mind control secret techniques make her an obvious candidate for the K-section. Turns out she's a prodigy. She's K-section until she's an adult.

"K-4: Hyuga Hinata. She's K-1's younger cousin, and aside from being a Hyuga, they say she adored her older cousin from a young age. She's the heir to the main branch of the clan, and we feared he would exert his influence on her at a critical juncture. Besides, the Hyuga clan keeps this stuff hush-hush, but reports from the field indicate there's something unique about her Byakugan.

"K-5: Aburame Shino. The Aburame clan is one of Konoha's best assets, and also one of its best-kept secrets. He hit K-section the instant his control over the destruction beetles exploded in an incident along the border of our forests.

"K-6: Inuzuka Kiba. Between his early mastery over the man-beast ninjutsu of his clan and the constant disrespect he expressed for the rules and institutions of our village, he was tentatively placed on the list after siccing his dog on Iruka, giving him a long scar across the face before being subdued.

"K-7: Shikimaru Nara. For years we thought this kid was completely talentless, but his jonin instructor Asuma set him some intelligence tests disguised as games. Turns out the kid's a genius with an IQ of over 200. Between that and his apparent secretiveness, he made the K-section quickly.

"K-9: Uzumaki Naruto."

"Wait a second," Anko said. "You skipped K-8."

"Ah, right." Hayate coughed. "Well, that's the problem with K-8, Tenten. She's very hard to remember. No one's sure if it's a jutsu or a kekkai genkai or what, but it makes her dangerous. She's an unknown quantity. The only reason it took so long to put her in the K-section is because people kept forgetting to do so.

"K-9: Uzumaki Naruto. He's got the nine-tailed fox in him, so of course he was K-section the instant we learned about the situation."

"Then why isn't he K-1?" the chunin asked.

"I thought it was funnier this way," Hokage-sama said. "Go on, Hayate."

"Sure. K-10: Uchiha Sasuke. For a long time we hoped Sasuke would turn out to be another Itachi…until Itachi turned out to be Itachi. After he realized his Sharingan during that A-rank mission Kakashi took his team on, he was put in the K-Section. The last Uchiha may prove to be even more dangerous than Hyuga Neji.

"K-11: Hariya Potter. She appeared less than six weeks ago in the Konoha forest and was picked up by Kakashi's team. We don't know where she came from or what she's doing here, although the best guess is that she's after Naruto and the fox. She's completely resistant to genjutsu, some even going so far as to say she doesn't have chakra. Whatever bloodline limit she's packing breaks all the rules. Even though all K-section ninja are unofficial S-Rank threats, there are those who want to see her made an official S-Rank threat _now_." He paused. "I suppose we should add that she outmaneuvered the Hokage and Ibiki into letting her join the Chunin Exams. I would have thought it would take someone of Orochimaru's caliber to do that.

"Finally, K-12: Rock Lee. He was added to the K-section two days ago when we learned he was capable of using the Eight Inner Gates during the recently completed second exam. Knowing that K-1 and K-8 are his teammates and the unpredictable Might Guy is his jonin instructor, it wasn't hard to make the decision to add him to the K-section."

"That many K-section genin, huh?" the chunin gulped. "And they're all in the Chunin Exams together."

"Usually there's just two or three K-section members at the most," Hokage-sama said. "There's always at least one Hyuga and one Uchiha born every generation who get put there. No wonder they all passed despite being rookies."

"Twelve K-section genin is really too much," Ibiki said. "You've got your work cut out, Hayate."

"At least it's not thirteen dangerous Konoha genin," Anko said. "Thirteen is bad luck."

* * *

><p>Hayate read off the names of the first two combatants.<p>

"Yakushi Kabuto, Uchiha Sasuke. Please come forward."


	9. The Most Dangerous Konoha Genin

The rest of the genin went up to the platforms while Kabuto and Sasuke remained in the arena below along with Hayate and the other chunin and jonin. Hariya had to take the stairs instead of jumping straight up, so she was still with Kabuto when the other genin had left.

"Hariya, Sasuke is this year's top rookie," Kabuto whispered. "Honestly, I probably can't beat him."

"Sure you can!" Hariya punched him on the arm. "Believe in yourself! Knock the 't' off the 'can't!'"

"Honestly, this is the end of the road for me," Kabuto said. "I'm just about out of strength after those five days in the forest. There's no way I can take Sasuke on in a state like this. You might also find yourself fighting an opponent you can't beat. But watch me, and I'll show you the truth."

Hariya climbed up the stairs to the platforms. The Konoha genin formed one group while the Sand and Sound made their own respective clusters elsewhere. Naruto's orange jacket and Sakura's pink hair stuck out in exactly the sort of way that ninjas weren't supposed to. They both looked tense, leaning over the railing and staring down as if only their grip on the metal bars kept them from jumping down to protect their teammate.

"Is Kabuto strong?" Naruto growled.

"I think so," Hariya answered. "But I don't think he wants to win."

"Begin!" Hayate called, but neither fighter wanted to move. Sasuke was holding so still Hariya thought he must've been concentrating on nothing but falling over. Kabuto meanwhile looked haggard and grey as if five days exhaustion had caught up with him in an instant.

"Thanks for saving my team from Naruto's stupidity earlier," Sasuke grunted. "I'm afraid I can't repay the favor."

"You look dead on your feet," Kabuto said.

"So do you."

"Uh, fight!" Hayate coughed.

"I'm the last Uchiha there is," Sasuke said. "I've been dead on my feet my whole life."

"That's a really dumb attitude."

"Fight, please," Hayate said.

"Kick his ass, Sasuke!" Naruto shouted.

"I'll break your arms if you don't break his!" Sakura cheered.

That sent Sasuke into action. He drew a knife out of his pouch and threw it at Kabuto, who ducked and dashed forward. His punch caught Sasuke above his guard and sent him crashing back.

"Yeah!" Hariya whooped. "Sexy is no match for glowy hands!"

Kabuto pressed the advantage, kneeling by Sasuke's head and aiming a punch. Sasuke took it on his forearm but couldn't escape from Kabuto's barrage.

"This is bad," said a girl with impractical long blonde hair, blending in with the conspicuous features of the other ninjas. "Sasuke's going to lose."

"Hey, Sasuke, when did you become such a big loser?" Naruto shouted. "I thought you wanted to fight me! I'll be giving you orders when I'm a chunin and you're not!"

Even though Kabuto was by Sasuke's head, somehow Sasuke's foot exploded into Kabuto's chin, knocking him up and back. Blood flew through the air.

"Eeeeeew!" Hariya screamed. "Kabuto! Glow hands, quick!"

Sasuke vanished and reappeared behind Kabuto's staggering form. The tips of his fingers poked into Kabuto's back.

"That's my move!" a kid with a stupid-looking bowl haircut gasped.

"It's over," Sasuke said.

"The Shadow of the Dancing Leaf." Kabuto's voice sounded wet through the blood. "But what's next? I'm not down yet."

"This!" Sasuke said. He coughed blood onto Kabuto's back.

"Eeeeeeeeeeeew!" Hariya screamed. "That is _super_ gross."

Sasuke trembled, his muscles contracted. Veins bulged on his limbs like snakes crawling underneath his skin. Across the side of his right face spread a strange black pattern like sideways flames.

"You'll need at least that much power to defeat me," Kabuto said. "Maybe more."

"Pull it back, Sasuke!" Naruto shouted. "Don't give in to that snaky freak!"

"Shut up!" Sasuke roared. The spread of the skewed dark flames halted, then reversed, retracting back until the last of it faded into somewhere between his neck and left shoulder.

"That's impossible," Anko snapped, apparently forgetting himself.

"Sasuke!" Sakura squealed.

Sasuke roared again, rearing back and slamming his left knee into the back of Kabuto's leg. He fell onto his right, and Sasuke's knee came around into Kabuto's side with an audible smack. Kabuto blocked it with his arm, but the next knee came in lower, and Hariya could see Kabuto's body bend over at the impact.

Kabuto's hand whipped back, knocking Sasuke away.

"Yes!" Hariya slapped the railing. "Get him!"

Kabuto fell to his knees.

"Come on, Kabuto!"

Kabuto held a hand to his mouth. A second later he pulled it away, coughing up more blood than Hariya would have thought possible.

"I'm done, that's it," he choked.

"Fight's over," Hayate said. "Sasuke wins. Next fight—"

"Hold up." Kakashi appeared behind Sasuke just before Sasuke stumbled back. "At least let us clear the fighters out."

"I'm just, uh, trying to get these done, Kakashi."

"Yeah, but Kabuto just coughed up more blood than the human body contains. Need a medic, kid?"

Kabuto nodded. "Sasuke and I should both go."

"Anko, go with them," Kakashi said.

Hayate watched until Anko, Sasuke, and Kabuto had left the room. "Finally," he coughed.

"It was two minutes, Hayate."

"Finally," Hayate repeated.

"Yes!" Sakura cheered. "Sasuke's the best!"

Hariya stared despondently at the blood on the ground. It was Kabuto's, and there was a lot of it. She hadn't expected him to win, not after he said he wouldn't, but she hadn't expected him to lose either.

Now what? It wasn't fun anymore. Her team was broken.

She realized Tsurugi was staring at her.

"Kabuto says to be strong and never lose your core," he said. He stared at her. "Did you hear me? Kabuto says—"

"Heard it, thanks."

"Good, because Kabuto said to say that."

"In your faces!" Sakura gloated. "Sasuke is the best their is."

Kakashi-jerk appeared behind her. It was such a predictable ninja move. "I wouldn't be laughing if I were you, Sakura."

"Why not?"

"Next match," Hayate coughed. "Haruno Sakura, Yamanaka Ino. Please come down."

"Oh," Sakura said. Then she grinned. "Perfect." She leaped down to the stage below, followed by the long-haired blonde girl.

"Go Sakura!" Naruto cheered. "What are you doing up here, Kakashi? Aren't you going to watch with the other jonin?"

"I like to think of myself as the cool jonin who hangs out with the kids," Kakashi said. He positioned himself in between Naruto and Hariya, pushing her with his butt toward a fat guy with a scarf and scowling ninja with a dumb ponytail.

"Rude," Hariya muttered.

The fat guy produced a bag of crisps from somewhere and crunched on them. "Seems like an easy match for Ino, right, Shikimaru?"

The scowling guy rested his elbows on the railing. "It's not that simple, Choji. Ino's a long-range fighter whose best jutsu need a diversion. A one-on-one fair fight like this is the worst situation for her."

"But Sakura doesn't know any jutsus and is totally useless."

"Well, yeah. Sakura is useless."

Another jonin appeared beside Kakashi, a thick man with a dark, scraggly looking beard that Hariya wanted to touch. "Hate to say it, Kakashi, but my kids are right. Ino's the best thing to happen to the Yamanaka clan since their founding. And Sakura is…useless."

"It's true that Sakura is useless and doesn't know any jutsus," Kakashi said. "And yet, when she entered the forest five days ago, her hair was much longer."

"Sakura is going to absolutely destroy her," Naruto said. "Trust me."

_I guess I'm rooting for her_, Hariya decided.

"Sorry, Sakura, but your journey ends here," Ino said. "I'm surprised you even made it past the first exam."

"And…fight," Hayate said.

"It won't be like before." Sakura tightened her forehead protector. "I've changed."

"Fight," Hayate said.

"We'll see about that," Ino said. "I remember when you were just a little crybaby with a big forehead."

"I remember that too," Sakura said. "I—" She stopped.

Hariya looked from her to Ino, who also stood stock-still. "What just happened?"

"They're having flashbacks," Shikimaru said. "Sometimes it happens when two ninjas who know each other really well meet in combat."

"Fight!" Hayate said.

"Screw the past!" Ino flung a pair of throwing stars at Sakura and jumped back, making seals with her hands. Sakura dodged to the side and charged forward.

"So Ino's going to stay at distance and try to hit Sakura with a mind-body switch jutsu?" Chouji asked around a mouthful of crisps.

"The mind-body jutsu is too slow for that," Shikimaru said. "She's buffering it so she can hit Sakura at close range. That way she'll only have to make the final seal. This is going to be a fistfight."

"That's Sakura's best range," Naruto said. "Mine too."

"Mine three," Hariya said. It was technically true.

Sakura made seals of her own. A pair of additional Sakuras pooled into existence beside her, all running toward Ino.

"A basic jutsu like that won't cut it!" Ino said. "We're not in the academy anymore, but you haven't grown up. I could beat you without the mind-body jutsu!"

"Talking is a free action," Shikimaru explained. "Milo no jutsu."

"They're not real like mine," Naruto added. "Only I can do that."

Ino leapt forward, ignoring the two clones on either side of Sakura and heading for the real body in the original. Her strike hit Sakura on the forearm, and her second smacked into Sakura's open palm. Both clones disappeared. Ino pulled back for another attempt.

She couldn't.

"Why is my fist stuck on your arm?" She heaved, but her hands wouldn't come unstuck.

"No good, Ino!" Sakura panted. She slid her arm across Ino's fist slowly as if she were pulling it through a vat of honey. Her palm settled over Ino's fist and gripped it.

Ino strained to pull free. "How are you doing this?"

"Chakra…control!" Sakura gasped. Even though she was sweating, a wild grin lit up her face. "I'm the best…in our year!"

"It's true," Kakashi said. "She surpasses even Sasuke at chakra control."

"This isn't a tree-climbing exercise!" Ino roared.

Hariya saw it before Ino even began to move. Both fighters were in close range, their hands tied up and legs spread apart. It was ideal conditions for a Crotch Kick.

Ino's foot blasted in between Sakura's legs like a ton of dynamite through the backside of a cave.

"But girls don't have—that!" Chouji said.

"Idiot, it will still hurt," Shikimaru said. "Sakura is better than I thought, but she doesn't have Ino's killer instinct."

Naruto laughed. "You guys don't get Sakura at all."

Ino's foot was stuck between Sakura's legs.

"That should have hurt at least!" Ino snapped.

"It's the most basic thing, softening your fall with chakra," Sakura said. "I did it to your kick. And now you have only one leg—"

"Raagh!" Using Sakura's grip as leverage, Ino fired her remaining foot into Sakura's stomach. This time, watching closely, Sakura could see how immediately upon impact the foot seemed to rotate just slightly, gliding along the surface. It stuck to Sakura's stomach and stayed there.

Chouji munched crisps faster, spitting flecks of potato when he talked. "Crap! Shikimaru, Ino's in trouble!"

"There's nothing she can do," Shikimaru said grimly. "She can't use any jutsu. The only move she has left is a headbutt, and I doubt that would work any better than her previous strikes."

"When did Sakura get that good?" Asuma breathed.

"When did you get that good?" Ino screamed. "I'm better than you! I'm the prodigy of the Yamanaka clan!"

"This generation has too many prodigies," Sakura said. Her face was lit with a glow like a predator that had gone without food for a month spying a dying animal twitching in the dirt. "I worked for this! I mastered chakra control through years of unrelenting practice. With chakra alone I can block any jutsu, capture any enemy. Chakra makes me strong enough to break bones, fast enough to outrun a giant tiger, smart enough to beat Shikimaru at shogi!"

"I won that game," Shikimaru said. "Admittedly, it was only because she fainted halfway through, but still."

"So what'll it be, Ino?" Sakura demanded. "You want me to break the bones in your hands just by squeezing? I could slam you into the ground or a wall until you lose consciousness. Alternatively, I could just wait for this position to get _really_ uncomfortable for you."

"I give up," Ino gasped. "You win!"

"Uh, Haruno Sakura wins," Hayate coughed. "Please separate."

"It's a good thing that superstitious Anko isn't here to see this," Hokage-sama muttered to Ibiki. "We need to add another genin to the K-section."


	10. Hyuga Neji vs Rock Lee

Sakura released Ino from her chakraic hold, and they both staggered back, panting. The corner of Hariya's vision flickered as Kakashi and Asuma disappeared and reappeared by their students. A second later, they were back, setting them down on the platform with the other genin.

"How the hell did you get so good?" Ino was screaming. "You're useless! You don't know any jutsus!"

"Yeah, actually, how the hell did you get so good?" Kakashi-jerk asked. "You _are_ useless."

"Some stuff went down in the forest," Sakura said nonchalantly, brushing off her clothes. "No biggie."

"Sakura's the best!" Naruto spread his arms wide. "Hug?"

"No."

"Okay."

Hayate coughed. "Next two fighters: Aburame Shino, Abumi Zaku."

A boy wearing dark glasses and an over-sized jacket jumped down to meet another boy with his arms each in a sling like they were broken.

"Ha!" Sakura said. "That chump. Shino will destroy him."

_Twenty seconds later_

"Ahhhh!" Zaku screamed. "I surrender! Get them off of me!"

"Shino wins," Hayate coughed. The screaming continued. "Shino, get the bugs off of him."

"Fine." Shino said. The bugs withdrew into his oversized jacket. He joined his cheering teammates on the platform while the other sound ninja fetched their shell-shocked partner.

Hariya felt sick. Any minute now her name could be called. Each and every one of these ninja had freaky super powers. How could she fight them?"

Tsurugi stared at her. "Kabuto says—"

"I got it, thanks!"

"Next fight," Hayate coughed. "Nara Shikimaru vs Tsuchi Kin."

The boy with a ponytail and a perpetual scowl grumbled as he made his way down to the arena. "This sort of fight only fits Choji on our team. But I suppose I have to do something after that genius Ino lost. Why do I have to be fighting a girl? Grumble grumble grumble."

"At least I'll get to watch Shikimaru absolutely destroy someone," Ino huffed.

"Yeah, this is gonna be murder," Choji munched happily on a second bag of crisps.

_Twenty seconds later_

"Stop hitting yourself," Shikimaru said. "It's so much trouble. Why are you hitting yourself? Don't bother."

"Ow!" Kin said. "Ow! I surr—ow!"

"Yeah…" Hayate coughed. "Shikimaru wins."

"Stop—sweet."

"Next fight: H—"

Hariya gasped.

"—yuga Neji vs Rock Lee."

"What?" a man in a tight green one piece and a ridiculous bowl cut shrieked. "Why do my teammates have to fight each other? That's not fair."

"It's all random," Hayate said. "They'd be fighting in the next exam anyway."

"But who do I root for?"

"Who cares?"

A boy who looked like a younger, stupider version of his jonin faced off against a taller genin with long dark hair and white eyes.

"Get 'em, Neji!" Sakura and Ino screamed.

"He's popular?" Hariya asked.

"Anything's better than Rock Lee," Sakura said grimly. "I'd like to fight him myself."

"You'd tear him apart," Naruto said. "Alright, go Neji!"

"Fight," Hayate said.

Neji didn't take a stance. "You know you're no match for me, Lee. Our fates have been decided already. I'm a genius, and you're a no-talent loser who can't even use ninjutsu."

Sakura's face softened. "He's like me."

"You can't possibly win," Neji said. "We're simply different, and no amount of work can make you like me. If only I was fighting my younger cousin so that I could straight murder her."

"Man, Neji's a douchebag," Naruto said. "I hope Lee kicks his ass."

"I've been practicing really hard for the day I can defeat you!" Lee said. "Hold on while I take my leg weights off, okay?"

Neji stared as Lee rolled up his pants, revealing a weight wrapped around each leg. He removed them. "Cover your ears, okay?"

"Wha—"

He dropped them. KABOOM, they went.

"Told you," Lee said as Neji pulled himself back up.

"You've been wearing that the whole time?" Neji's eyes bugged out. "Even in the forest where we nearly died?"

"Yep. For four years. I'm pretty fast."

"That's insa—"

Lee struck. The ground literally exploded underneath his feet. Neji flew back, shock on his face. Lee appeared where Neji had been standing and disappeared again, his presence marked only by the destroyed stone where his feet had been. Neji was battered around the arena. Hariya could barely see Lee except for when he stopped at the point Neji was sent flying from.

"Lee's kicking his butt!" Naruto whooped.

"It's not as simple as that," Shikimaru said. "Shikimaru's a lot faster, but Neji's strikes are more powerful."

"How are they stronger?" Naruto said. "Look how much speed is behind Lee's hits."

"Lee uses the hard fist style," Shikimaru explained. "That basically means he tries to punch people hard the same way you do. But Neji uses gentle fist. He puts chakra into his strikes that go straight to the internal organs. Even Lee needs a few good hits to take an opponent out, but Neji needs only one."

"But how can he see where the internal organs are?" Naruto peered down. "That's impossible."

"Uh, it's called _anatomy_," Hariya said. "It's not hard figuring out where someone's kidney—"

"It's impossible," Shikimaru said. "That's why only the Hyuga clan uses this jutsu. With their—"

"Literally anyone can do it," Hariya said. "Anyone."

"—Byakugan, they can see through through a person's skin right to their skeleton and internal organs."

Sakura held up two fingers like she was focusing chakra. "That's why Lee hasn't destroyed him yet. He's on the defensive too. Every time he gets near, Neji aims for an exchange of blows. He thinks he can take three of Lee's hits if that means landing one."

"You can see them in that detail?" Hariya asked.

Sakura smirked. "I'm probably the only genin here who can."

There was another loud crack as the stone split where Lee had just been. Neji jumped back as Lee reappeared, panting for breath.

"When the hell did you get so fast?" Neji demanded.

"That's what I'd like to know." Ino made a weird shape with her hands and pointed it at Lee. "I wonder what it feels like to move around in that body."

"Ino…." Asuma said.

She dropped the shape. "I can't have any fun, can I?"

"Later. When he's sleeping."

"Fine."

"I practiced and worked really hard," Lee said. "And now I'm going to show you the full fruits of my training."

"Practice is awesome!" Naruto said.

"Yeah!" Lee's older clone cheered. "Show him the Gates! Not that I favor one student above the others," he added.

"Why not?" Kakashi said. "I do."

"The Gates?" Neji gasped.

"The Gates?" everyone gasped but Hariya.

"What're the Gates?" she sighed.

"That's right, the Gates!" Lee said. "I was the only one who could master this technique on our team. You couldn't do it. Uh…who's our other teammate? Anyway, that person couldn't do it either! But I practiced. I sweated and bled and pushed until I was nearly dead in order to master this technique. And now I'm going to destroy you with it."

"Then I have no choice but to stand here and watch you do it," Neji said.

Steam began to pour from Lee's body. The bandages around his hands loosened and flapped in a wind that seemed to emanate from his body.

Kakashi-jerk pulled the headband off his eye, revealing a nasty scar and a freaky pupil split into three parts. "This could be interesting."

"Ohmygod_ew_ put it away put it away!" Hariya kicked his foot. "Keep that nasty stuff covered up. Anyway, what're the Gates?"

"Every ninja is born with eight gates that, when unlocked, allow them to realize huge amounts of chakra," Sakura said. "But it's a double-edged technique. I'm really surprised Lee can do it."

"He worked hard," Naruto said. "You can do anything if you work hard. Believe it!"

"I'll need to concentrate to follow this," Sakura said. "Don't distract me or I'll lose sight."

"I want to steal that body!" Ino whined. "I want to I want to I want to!"

"No," Asuma said. "You can't just steal any body that you like."

"But I want to!"

Lee moved. The stone floor tore apart into a thick disk of dust that surrounded Neji, who tensed and held his palms in. All Hariya could observe of Lee was the _patpatpatpatpatpatpatpatpat_ of his feet.

"I can barely see him," Sakura said. "I can't believe how fast he is."

"Neji's going to lose," Naruto crowed.

"Come on, then!" Neji shouted as the storm of rock accelerated. "Take me out then! Quit wasting time and maybe I'll acknowledge you!"

The rock exploded behind Neji and then in front. Neji's lead arm flashed. Hariya flinched at a boof like the sound of a storm stopping all at once. Her eyes were so used to not being able to follow the action that it took her a moment to realize what she was seeing.

Lee hung on the end of Neji's outstretched palm like a limp fish. His fist hovered just in front of Neji's chin for a moment, and then it fell along with the rest of him in a heap.

In the stunned silence, Hayate coughed. "Uh, Hyuga Neji wins. Please clear the floor."

"Too bad," Neji smirked as ninjas marked as medics loaded Lee onto a stretcher. "I had already seen you use the gates twice with my Byakugan, first in your fight with Sasuke and then in the forest. Your attack pattern is to hit from the front first. So I provoked you and struck." He tossed his long hair. "And that's what happens when a no-talent loser fights a genius."

"He's a genius all right," Asuma murmured as Neji jumped onto the platform. Kakashi covered his freaky gross eye again and didn't speak.

"Wow," Sakura whispered. Ino shuddered. "Glad I didn't take that hit."

"Neji, you asshole," Naruto said loudly. "I will straight kick your ass."

"Get him, Naruto," Hariya said so quietly she barely heard herself.

"No, you won't," Neji said. "Where's Tenten?"

"Who?" seemed to be the general reaction of the other genin.

"Tenten—never mind."

"Next two, then," Hayate said. Hariya shivered. At least Tsurugi was still here. "Uh, Misumi Tsurugi and Kankuro."

_Oh_.

"Finally! Time fur Kankuro tae shaw whit he's gart ay."

"Remember what Kabuto said." Tsurugi stared at her. "Do you remember?"

"_Yes_. Good luck."

"Don't need it." Tsurugi dropped down. Hariya felt a little more confident at that. His opponent, a big guy in a dark hood with dumb paint all over his face didn't look very scary.

"Fight," Hayate coughed.

Face Paint Man pointed a thick finger at Tsurugi. "Aam Kankuro, laddie. Let's see whit yoo've—"

Tsurugi ran forward, stretching out his weird dislocated arms to try and grab Kankuro. Kankuro reared back and smashed Tsurugi to the ground with a single punch.

"Kankuro wins," Hayate coughed.

"Ah rule!" Kankuro thrust his hands in the air.

"Guid job, divit," called a blonde girl standing by the red-haired gourd kid. "Noo gie back up haur."

Hariya watched the last of her teammates carried away by the medics. She and Tsurugi weren't exactly close, but he had been decent in a weird sort of way. Besides, her teams was oh for two now.

_Maybe I can fight Naruto. He doesn't seem scary._

Hayate called the next two fighters. "Uzumaki Naruto and Inuzuka Kiba."

_Oh._


	11. The Nimpja

Naruto tripped on the railing as he jumped down. He landed face-first on the ground with a painful thump.

Kiba landed beside him. He had two marks that looked like fangs on either cheek and carried a cute puppy on the top of his shaggy hair.

"Did I just win?" He looked at Hayate. "I think he's dead."

"I...won't lose!" Naruto shouted, struggling to his feet. Blood dripped from his head.

"That looks, uh, kind of serious," Hayate said.

"I never give up." Naruto swiped the blood across his forehead protector. "That's my ninja way."

"Yeah, but you could, uh, have a concussion or something."

"Nope!"

"He is the number one unpredictable ninja," Kakashi-jerk said.

"Kick his ass, Naruto!" Sakura cheered. "All three of us are going to pass!"

Hariya cupped her hands around her mouth. "The Navy's proud reputation depends on you, Naruto! Don't embarrass us or it'll be a flogging. Also, you're kind of my only friend left."

Hariya noticed a girl with short round hair standing off to the side by Shino the bug-freak. She was worrying the sleeves of her jacket and mumbling something.

"I want to root for Naruto, but Kiba is my teammate...but...no...but..."

Weirdo. Hariya turned her attention to where Naruto was holding a medic at knife-point.

"I'm becoming a chunin and no one's stopping me!" He drew the knife closer to the medic's neck. "And I heal super fast so just quit worrying."

"The quicker I kick his ass, the sooner you'll be able to get him to a doctor," Kiba said.

"Fine, whatever," Hayate coughed. "Let the, uh, dog fight begin." He coughed. "Anyone?"

"Ah dornt gie it!" Kankuro said.

"Anyone else?"

"Who cares!" Naruto kicked the medic away. "Kiba, get your dog out of here. Let's have a fair, honest fight between ninjas.

"None of you know what ninjas are!" screamed a voice that sounded a lot like Hariya's.

Kiba pointed a finger dramatically. "Naruto, you're such an idiot. How do you not know that everyone in the Inuzuka clan has a dog partner? Me and Akamaru fight as one."

Naruto glared at Hayate. "Is that allowed?"

"Naruto, you win all your fights with demon magic. You're the last person who should be complaining."

"Good point." Naruto crossed his fingers in front of his chest in a familiar way. Hariya remembered just a second before Naruto shouted, "Multiple Shadow Clone Jutsu!"

"Why does he call his attacks?" Hariya grabbed her hair as half a dozen clones sprouted around Naruto. "He's an idiot!"

"Yeah, Naruto's pretty stupid," Shikimaru said. "Still, I'd say this is trouble for Kiba. Eh, Shino?" Shino grunted.

"Kick his ass, disposable bodies!" Naruto's clones rushed forward, trying to surround Kiba. He jumped away, holding onto Akamaru with one hand and tossing out a handful of shuriken with the other. The Narutos didn't have any trouble dodging as they closed the distance.

"Naruto's a close-range fighter," Choji said, munching on a third bag of crisps. Seriously, where was he getting them from? "Shouldn't this be a good match-up for Kiba?"

Shikimaru peered down at the fighters. Kiba was totally on the defensive, doing nothing but slowing the Narutos down with shurikens and dodging their attacks.

"Kiba's fighting style is different from Neji's, Lee's or Naruto's," Shikimaru said. "They use their jutsu, then run in and punch. But Kiba's attacks are jutsu." He glanced at Shino. "I'm guessing he needs time to buffer seals in order to unleash a series of fast-paced attacks. Otherwise, he's good for only one shot."

Shino nodded. "Normally Hinata scopes out the situation, and I buy time while maneuvering the enemy into Kiba's path."

"The worst enemy for Kiba would be someone who charges in immediately, giving him no time to prepare jutsus," Shikimaru said.

"And Naruto's all about charging in immediately," Sakura said triumphantly. "Even I might have trouble 'catching' six punches at once."

"What would happen if I stole his brain?" Ino asked. "Would I be in control of the clones too? Maybe I should..."

"No," Asuma said.

"But—"

"No."

Ino stamped her foot. "You're no fun."

"What's not fun is having to write a report explaining why a foreign noble took off his pants in the middle of the street and started screaming about how cute Sasuke-chan is," Asuma said.

"I'd just squash them all," Choji said.

"I'd pick each one apart," Neji smirked.

"Um," Hinata said. "Um, um...I hope they both do well."

"I'd probably depend on Naruto being an idiot," Shikimaru said. "Kiba is waiting for an opportunity."

Hariya looked at the action. Naruto's clones hadn't been able to catch Kiba, but he was running low on breath. Naruto brimmed with energy.

"This is it for you, Kiba!" Naruto made the seal for shadow clones. "I'm going to leave you nowhere to run. SHADOW CLONEAAAGH!"

"Naruto, you idiot!" Sakura shouted as clones filled the ground floor. "Each clone cuts your chakra by half!"

"—CLONEAAAAAGHH!" Naruto continued to shout as clone after clone appeared in a cloud of smoke that swiftly obscured the battlefield. They pressed Kiba and the other high-ranking ninja against the wall.

"He can't hear you because he shouts when he attacks," Hariya said. "It's his one weakness!"

"He has a lot more weaknesses than that," Shikimaru said.

The smoke cloud disappeared in a sudden negative poof. Kiba and the other ninjas were still pressed against the wall, their eyes wide with horror. But there was no longer a horde of Narutos, only a single Naruto in the center of the arena, leaning on one knee and panting heavily.

"Kiba wins." Shikimaru sounded bored.

"Naruto, you idiot!" Sakura slapped the railing. "You ran out of chakra!"

"Yeah, he's pretty dumb," Kakashi said.

Hariya's stomach fell. Kiba laughed. "Naruto, I can't believe you had me worried there for a minute. I should have known." He fed something to his dog and set Akamaru on the ground. "Check this out: Man-Beast Transformation!"

Hariya stared at the Kiba clone that had been a small dog. "This raises so many questions. Just so many."

Kiba flashed through a series of seals. Then he pulled something small out of his pocket and flicked it at Naruto.

"What the hell is this?" Naruto coughed.

"It's a soldier pill, dumbass. It'll restore your chakra. I want to beat you for real."

"Kiba's an idiot too," Shino said.

"Sweet!" Naruto swallowed the pill. He stood, grinning. "You're going to regret that, KiOHMYNINJAGOD!"

Kiba and Akamaru vanished, replaced by twin vortexes that cut through the air with a high-pitched whine. One smashed into Naruto's legs. The pants cut open and blood flew into the air along with Naruto before the second whirlwind drilled into him from the side. They hit him again and again in a blindingly fast combination, pushing him to the edge of the arena. Naruto slammed against the wall, coughing up almost as much blood as Kabuto had. The vortexes came to a stop in front of him, revealing two Kibas, one of whom bent over and vomited.

"We have got to come up with an anti-nausea jutsu," Kiba said. "I think that's my win."

"Holy crap," Asuma said.

"Sakura, did you see that?" Shikimaru asked.

She shook her head. "I wasn't focusing."

Thick veins stood out around Neji's eyes. "He'll be an interesting opponent."

"Ew, what's wrong with your eyes, freak?" Hariya demanded, kicking Neji's foot.

"It's my Byaku—who are you?"

"I'm Hariya Potter, sixth grade but I'm really at a ninth grade level—"

"Stop. I don't care."

Naruto hacked up another lung's worth of blood. "I'm not done yet."

"I think you are," Kiba said. "You're as pale as a ghost and about to become one."

Hayate coughed. "The battle of the dogs goes to—"

"Naruto, get up!" Hariya leaned her head over the railing. "I'm not going to lose all my friends! It's not over yet!"

"Yes, uh, yes it is," Hayate said. "He's got no blood left."

"Silence, you, or face my wrath!"

Hayate glanced at the Hokage. "Do I get ninja comp for any injuries she visits upon me?"

Hokage-sama sighed. "There's no such thing as ninja comp."

"The fight's still on!"

"Hey, Kiba." Naruto crossed his fingers in front of his chest. "I still have most of my chakra. Shadow Cloeaaghhh!"

Two shadow clones appeared on either side of Naruto, standing against the wall.

"They copy all your severe organ damage too, moron! They can't fight!" Akamaru pulled himself to his feet and they flashed through the seals for another attack.

"Naruto, don't just stand there!" Sakura shouted, but it was too late. Kiba and Akamaru transformed into a whirlwind of sharp claws and smashed right through the clouds of smoke that were the disappearing shadow clones. Their heads left craters in the wall as they both collapsed.

"Kiba is an idiot," Shino said.

"Naruto wins, I guess," Hayate coughed. "He's less dead."

"Woohoo!" Naruto tried to say, but it came out as more of a bloody gurgle. The medics came and escorted Kiba away while Kakashi grabbed Naruto and took him up to the platform. "I heal fast," Naruto coughed.

"NARUTOYESOMININJAGOSHYOUDIDIT!" Hinata screamed. She glanced at the other genin. "I mean, uh, oh no, uh, Kiba lost."

"Yes!" Hariya pounded the railing. "I knew you could do it! Wave our flag proudly, Naruto. Double rations tonight!"

Sakura coughed. "All three genin of team seven passed. Just saying."

"Naruto won the battle of the idiots," Shikimaru mused. "Does that make him smarter? Or a more powerful idiot?"

"Just seven people left," Ino said. "Choji, those two sand ninja, that sound ninja, Hinata, Hariya—hi, I'm Ino, anything interesting I should know beforehand about your body?—and...who?"

"Temari, Tenten, please come down," Hayate said.

The blonde girl who had shouted at Kankuro earlier hopped down. She wore her hair in an incredible quad-bun that struck Hariya as a more powerful jutsu than anything else she had seen today. The sand kunoichi carried a black monolith almost as tall as she was, and she seemed incredibly confident.

" Where's mah opponent, 'en?" she demanded. "Who's thes Tenten?"

The Konoha genin shared her confusion.

"Is that the last sound ninja?" Sakura asked.

"Sounds like a girl's name," Asuma said. "I don't know a Tenten."

"She's my teammate," Neji said. "And she's the most terrifying genin here."

Everyone's attention turned to the stage as Temari went flying, a trail of blood marking her path through the air.

"Hey!" a girl shouted across from her. She had only two buns, but they were still pretty good. "I'm Tenten! Remember that name!"

The genin gasped. "Where did she come from?" Shikimaru demanded.

"That's her special power," Neji said. "Everyone forgets about her. Even I need my Byakugan to see her." Again the thick veins around his eyes stood out. Gross. Hariya wanted to throw up.

"Oh yeah," Kakashi said. "I heard about a genin like her. Is it a kekkai genkai?"

"Who knows?" Neji smirked. "It's more like no one cares about Tenten."

"Oh, it's like Sakura," Kakashi said.

"Yeah, like Sakura."

"Hey, I'm strong now!" Sakura protested.

"Sure, Sakura. Whatever."

"Let the battle of the, uh, buns begin," Hayate coughed.

Temari spat blood as she got to her feet, using the black monolith for support. "Ah hae tae barnie a bit? An' only a lassie? Och weel." She flipped open the black monolith, revealing an ornate fan. "If Ah cannae min' whaur ye ur, i'll destroy everythin'!"

"I am sick and tired of everyone ignoring me!" Tenten screamed. She turned her back on Temari, instead facing the Konoha genin assembled on the platform. "You all are the worst, the absolute worst! I say hi and you all ignore me! I come back from a mission and everyone acts like I'm not even there! Even—" her voice broke— "Even my jonin instructor doesn't notice me!"

"Just like me," Naruto said sadly, spitting blood everywhere.

"Naruto, gross," Hariya sniffed. "It's very tragic. Act your age."

"Only Neji and Hinata ever talk to me, and I think they're just being nice," Tenten sobbed. "I'm so lonely!"

"Tenten, pay attention!" Neji shouted.

Temari pirouetted neatly, swinging her enormous fan. "Destructife win' technique!"

"She shouts her attacks too!" Hariya said. "Oh no!"

A...sideways hurricane without the water, that was the only way Hariya could describe it. It didn't tear through the air; it fed on it, expanding exponentially in the blink of an eye and promptly disappeared.

Tenten lowered a scroll that seemed to wave in her hand even though the breeze had died. "And as long as I have your attention, I'm going to get this off my chest!"

"Tenten, fight!" Neji said. "We can deal with this later!"

Tenten seemed to remember the flabbergasted Temari was still there. "Oh, you. I know all about ninja equipment. That's a WindFan 2000. They don't make those anymore. If you have something as expensive and rare as that, you probably specialize in wind jutsu. But I have a dozen of the highest-level wind-sealing scrolls, so that won't help you. Got anything else?" Tenten smirked. "Didn't think so."

"Tenten's the best thief in the world," Neji said. "They call her the Nimpja. When it comes to infiltration and escape, she's unparalleled."

"She built up a collection of rare and powerful ninja equipment," Kakashi said, rubbing his chin. "A walking, unnoticeable armory."

Temari snapped her fan shut. "It's a guid win' stick, but it's also guid fur beatin' fowk wi'." She charged forward, holding the fan like a cricket bat.

Tenten flashed a scroll. A dozen pellets burst into light. Temari didn't stop, but she stumbled and closed her eyes as she swung the fan. Tenten hopped over it easily, pulling out another scroll. She came down holding a hammer with a head bigger than a watermelon. Strange runes ran down the handle.

"That couldn't be," Asuma breathed.

"Ninjalnir," Kakashi said. "I thought it was lost decades ago."

Temari blinked and squinted through the purple glare. "Where'd ye—NOOOOOO!"

Tenten's hammer came down on Temari's fan, smashing it to pieces.

"That's that," Neji smirked.

"Mah...fan!" Temari gasped, falling to her knees. She gathered the nearby pieces. "Ye broke mah fan!"

"Yup," Tenten said. "You should really learn a second jutsu."

"Only shadow clones works for me," Naruto said.

"I don't even know any," Sakura said.

Temari walked off, sobbing with the pieces of her fan clutched to her chest, not even bothering to forfeit. "Bunbun—I mean, Tenten wins," Hayate coughed.

"I'm not going back up there!" Tenten said. "I don't want to be forgotten again!"

"We'll get you a bell!" Neji called. "You can take it off for missions. People will hear a tinkle and know you're there. Good fight, by the way."

"I love that idea!" She jumped onto the platform, and everyone promptly forgot about her.

"Uh...Akimichi Choji and Kinuta Dosu."

Choji discarded his fourth bag of crisps and belly-flopped onto the ground. His opponent, the Sound ninja who had attacked Hariya before the fourth test, made his way down in a more dignified manner. His face was covered in bandages, and his right arm was a weird metallic instrument with four holes in the arm. Hariya shuddered at the memory of the claw only a centimeter away from her face.

She really hoped Choji won.

"I hope Choji loses," Sakura said, rubbing her fist in her palm, "Just so I can beat that Sound creep a second time. No offense, Shikimaru."

Shikimaru shrugged. "I believe in Choji."

"Kill him, Choji!" Ino shouted. "Squash him flat as a ninja pancake!"

"Begin," Hayate sighed. "We're almost done."

"I have to fight the fattass, huh?" Dosu cocked his head at a weird angle. He pulled his long sleeve up, revealing the metallic right arm. "I'll help you burn off some calories."

"Never call me fat!" Choji stamped the ground, cracking it. "I hate three things, and one of them is being called fat!"

"Beat him, fat boy!" Ino whooped.

"Except when Ino does it!"

"Choji might want to win this more than anyone," Shikimaru said. "He's part of the proud and illustrious Akimichi clan, but he's never been accepted by the other genin. All they see is a fat loser. He gets nervous and performs worse."

"Just like me," Naruto said sadly, spitting blood all over.

"If Choji can become a chunin, he'll win the respect of the other ninjas his age," Shikimaru mused. "I would be very frightened to be his opponent on that stage."

"Even when he ate all those crisps?" Hariya asked.

"As for that..."

Dosu dashed forward, his right arm extended out at an awkward angle. Choji waited for him to near. He burst off the ground with an audible crack of the earth. Hariya swore that for a second his foot was three times bigger than normal. In the instant before Dosu reached him, Choji's arm definitely multiplied in size. His gigantic hand caught Dosu and slammed him into the ground. Choji...deflated. Dosu didn't get up.

"Choji wins," Hayate coughed.

"...Choji needs a lot of calories to activate his body size jutsu," Shikimaru said. He cupped his hands around his mouth. "Good work, Choji!"

"I'm not fat!" Choji shouted at Dosu's body as the medics took him away.

"Choji won!" Ino cheered. "Choji won!"

"You're the only one on our team who lost," Asuma reminded her.

"Oh yeah. I'm totally going to steal Sakura's body."

"What?" Sakura said.

"Nothing."

"Finally," Hayate said, "Our last fight. There are three genin left, so one of them will get a bye."

Hariya tensed. This was it. She would be fighting one of these child monsters. How could Kabuto think she could do that? He knew she wasn't a ninja!

She glanced at the wallflower wilting behind Shino and the red-haired kid with the gourd on the Sand platform. Which one of them would she be fighting?

"Gaara of the desert," Hayate coughed.

Oh.

"And Hhhhhhh..."


	12. Hinata vs Gaara

"Gaara of the Desert versus Hhhhhhhh…."

Hariya tensed.

"Hhhhyuga Hinata."

And exhaled.

The white-eyed girl who had cheered for Naruto jumped down to lower level along with the red-haired Scottish boy with the gourd.

"I guess that means you get a bye, Hariya." Sakura said. "Lucky." Hariya nodded mutely.

"I wonder what's in that gourd," Shikimaru said.

"Sand," Shino said. Hariya looked at him. He had the collar of his jacket pulled up around the lower half of his face like a Kakashi wannabe, and his eyes were covered by dark opaque glasses.

"How do you know?" Sakura asked.

"We saw," Shino answered. "Our team encountered theirs in the forest. Fortunately they didn't see us, but we saw them fight another team. That red-haired kid? He's a monster."

Coming from a guy whose entire body was a host for parasitic energy-eating bugs, that was pretty creepy. Hariya shivered.

"A monster?" Naruto said. He wasn't spitting as much blood as before. Hariya wasn't sure if that was because he healed as fast as he said or because he didn't.

Shino nodded but didn't clarify. Everyone turned their attention to the combatants below.

Hinata was in a stance almost identical to Neji's. Gaara was standing with his arms folded across his chest. He looked disdainful, bored even.

"Fight," Hayate coughed. He looked relieved that the fights were almost over.

"Yoo're nae th' a body Ah wanted ta barnie," Gaara said. Despite his accent, his voice was low and agitated, like a saw started up. "Mammy wants bluid, an' yoors isnae guid gnaw."

Hariya did the mental translation and reached a conclusion.

"That guy is like a super big creeper," she said, pointing down at him below. "Like a super big ultra mega creeper. With extra creep on the side."

"He's dangerous," Shino said.

"Suin, Mammy, Ah'll gie ye th' tasty bluid ye want," Gaara said. It seemed like he was talking to himself, but the words were directed as if he expected someone to listen. "First we hae tae kill thes lassie."

"Kick his butt, Hinata!" Naruto shouted. Hinata stiffened. She suddenly looked more nervous than ever.

"You are not helping," Shino said.

"She should attack before that sand guy has activated any jutsus," Shikimaru said.

"She shouldn't," Shino said. "She really shouldn't."

"Fight, please," Hayate coughed again. "We're almost done with this."

A stream of sand appeared behind Gaara's head and wrapped around him. It took Hariya a second to realize it was coming from the gourd.

"He controls sand?" Shikimaru said. "I've never heard of a jutsu like that."

"You control shadows, idiot," Ino said. "Kick his ass, Hinata!"

"When Hinata..._looked_ at him," Shino said, "she didn't say what she saw. She didn't say anything for over an hour."

Hariya peered down at the mousey girl facing off against the monster. She did look terrified, and she flinched every time Naruto pounded the railing and whooped.

Gaara extended a hand. "Ye willnae be in pain fur lang. Ah'll make thes quick."

The stream of sand shot toward Hinata faster than Hariya expected. The cry died in her throat as Hinata parted it around her hands. The sand fell to either side of her like a string had been cut, and Hinata hopped a few feet away, resuming her stance.

"What just happened?" Choji said, pulling open yet another bag of crisps. "What'd she do?"

Neji's eyes had those gross bulging veins around them again. "There's chakra in the sand. That's how he controls it. With the Byakugan, she can see the pattern of the chakra, and disrupt it with the gentle fist. And now that she knows the technique works—"

Hinata dashed forward, ducking low. As she approached Gaara a wall of sand rose in front of him, almost as if it had a will of its own. She planted both palms in it and it flew apart in pieces like splashing water. Hariya watched, amazed, as Hinata's motion continued. Her palms landed on Gaara's chest and belly. Instead of flying back like Hariya expected, he barely moved, instead pulling his arms in toward himself. The sand Hinata had deflected earlier was coming around behind her, but she twisted out of the way.

"That's the Byakugan," Neji smirked. "360 degree field of vision. There's a reason the Hyuga blood is so elite."

"You sound proud," Sakura said. "I thought you didn't like her."

Neji narrowed his eyes. "I don't."

Hinata was giving Gaara no rest. She danced around his sand, reacting just as quickly whether the attack came from the front or the side. And she was getting faster.

"She's learning his attack patterns," Shikimaru said. He sounded impressed.

"She's a fast learner," Kakashi-jerk said. "She's adjusting very quickly to a jutsu she's never seen before."

"Huh," Naruto said, peering down at the fight with growing excitement. "I didn't know Hinata was so good."

Soon it was clear Gaara was outmatched. No sooner would he twitch his fingers than Hinata was already reacting, spinning around a streak of sand and slapping his wall apart. She landed strikes on his chest, arms, and legs.

"I thought the gentle fist targeted internal organs," Shikimaru said. "Gaara should be dead by the number of hits he's taken."

"His body itself is covered in a layer of sand," Neji said. "And it's connected to his body, so it's constantly being maintained. It dilutes the power of her strikes."

"So she needs two hits in the same place," Shikimaru mused. "But Gaara isn't letting her get that."

"But he's entirely on the defensive," Sakura said. "Right, Shino? Hinata is winning!"

It seemed that way. But Hariya couldn't fight down a growing sense of unease, and judging by Shino's stony face, he couldn't either.

The fight was curiously immobile. Gaara hardly moved, even though he took hit after hit. But while his tactics were hardly changing, something else was. A tension in the atmosphere, a buzz in the air. It was growing, and it was coming from Gaara.

"Am I the only one who feels that?" Hariya whispered.

"I feel it too," Naruto said, his face surprisingly grim. "It's like he wants to kill her so bad the environment is responding. Zabuza was like that too."

"Limited stamina," Shikimaru muttered. "My weakness too. If her concentration breaks, she's dead."

Hinata dashed forward again, parting Gaara's defense, and landed two shots in quick succession on his chest, just to the right of his heart. Gaara fell, spitting blood.

Shino leaned over the railing. "Hinata! Finish him!"

Hinata was breathing heavily. She hesitated and that's when Hariya knew she would lose. It was also when Gaara attacked.

The sand wasn't just faster. There was more of it, Gaara's gourd melting off his back and flying toward her. She got her arms up in front of her face, but the sand tore through her. For a moment Hinata was invisible beneath the layer of sand, and then it was past her. Hinata was visible then, her clothes torn and her skin leaking blood from a thousand tiny cuts.

"Hinata!" Naruto shouted. "You have to get away!"

But instead of running away like Hariya expected, Hinata dashed forward.

"It's suicide," Ino said.

Gaara extended his arms and brought them in. The sand followed in unison, shooting at Hinata from every direction.

"Hinata's eyes see through everything," Shino said.

Neji's jaw was set. "It's the one thing the Hyuga blood didn't give me. And it's the one thing I want."

"There's some kind of monster in that Gaara," Shino said. "And Hinata knew about it from the start. If she wasn't so soft, this fight would already be over."

Hariya watched, eyes wide, as Hinata streaked toward Gaara. The sand closed in on her, wrapped around her legs, gathered on her arms. Gaara squeezed his fists together, and Hinata let out a ragged cry. But her fingers were pointed like spears, and they pierced through the wall of sand, and they landed one just after the other in the same part as before, just to the right of Gaara's heart. Instantly the sand fell from Hinata's body to the floor, and a second later, so did Gaara.

"She really can see," Kakashi murmured. "If she hadn't targeted the heart before she would have lost. This only makes if…."

Shikimaru looked at him. "What do you mean?"

"Nothing." Kakashi vanished from beside them, and a second later he was beside Hokage-sama, leaning over and whispering something. Hokage-sama nodded, and gestured to Hayate.

"Huh? Oh, uh, the fight's over," Hayate coughed, waving his hands. "Hinata wins."

Hinata's fall to the ground was interrupted by Shino and Naruto, who managed to catch her in time.

"That was awesome," Naruto said seriously. "You are super badass."

"I will buy you a pet cockroach to celebrate your victory," Shino said.

Hinata smiled weakly. "That's okay, actually." The medics came and took her away, although it seemed to Hariya that she clung to Naruto's sleeve for just a moment.

The sand team looked utterly appalled. The jonin, after a moment of shock, dropped down and grabbed Gaara. He seemed afraid to touch him, as if he was trying to carry a wounded tiger.

"And that concludes the preliminaries," Hayate coughed once the ground floor was clear. "Please come down now so we can draw lots for the fights of the third exam."

Shikimaru sighed. "What a pain. Ninjas aren't supposed to fight in the open."

"Tell me about it," Hariya mumbled. She felt worse and worse. That had been a bloody fight to the death. She needed to get out of here. Hariya clutched her necklace tightly and walked down the stairs to where everyone else was already waiting. Naruto waved at her.

_I can't do this._

Hariya waved back. She stood next to him, feeling numb. At the front the sand jonin was arguing with the hokage.

"They are Kankuro's siblings, he needs them to train—"

"I'm sorry, but the answer is no," Hokage-sama said. "Once a foreign ninja has lost, they no longer have a right to be here. Unfortunately, we cannot accept the presence of any sand ninja but Kankuro and yourself here for the remainder of the exam."

The sand jonin bowed his head. "I see. Temari, take Gaara and head to the border. You must tell Kazekage-sama that you and Gaara lost."

"But—"

"Do as I say!"

Temari, looked utterly miserable and terrified, gathered the unconscious Gaara in her arms and left.

_This is real, and I am seriously going to die._

"Won't he need a medic?" Hokage-sama asked.

"He heals quickly," the jonin muttered. "Forgive me, Hokage-sama." Hokage-sama nodded, and the jonin went to stand by Kankuro, who looked like he was trying hard not to freak out. Hariya knew the feeling, and nodded at him. He caught her eye and looked away.

"Now then, let me explain," Hayate said. "The final exam will be held a month from now to give you all time to recover and train. Remember, the third exam is about showing off your village's quality, so we want you to be at your best and ready for your opponent. And with that, I'll draw Uchiha Sasuke's lot…."

* * *

><p>"Well, this sucks," Naruto said. "Kakashi-sensei is taking Sasuke to train on a secret mountain somewhere while me and Sakura have to get taught by some pervert weirdo I beat in the first episode. Who're you training with?"<p>

Hariya shrugged. "Kakashi-jerk sure is a jerk." She fingered her necklace through the fabric of her shirt.

Sakura peered at her. "Are you okay?"

It took Hariya a moment to nod.

"Is he really such a pervert?" Sakura asked Naruto.

"Uh, hello, I'm right here," Ebisu-sensei said.

"Yeah, he's a huge pervert," Naruto said. "He likes naked women."

"Ew!"

"I know, right?"

"You're too young to understand these things!" Ebisu-sensei snapped. "Especially Hariya, who is only eleven. Try to learn from her example."

"Yup," Hariya said.

"Now, listen here. I'm going to teach you all how to walk on water. You'll need it if you don't want to die horribly in the third exam."

Naruto flexed his arms. "Awesome! I'm going to be Hokage! Believe it!"

Ebisu-sensei placed two fingers in front of his lips. "First, focus your chakra like this." He fell unconscious.

"Don't listen to that guy," a deep voice said. "He's a perverted idiot."

"Argh!" Naruto said. "Perverted sensei! What'd you do to him?"

Sakura drew a knife. "Who're you?"

The man tossed his long white hair proudly. His…high-heeled sandals (?) made a heavy wooden sound on the floor, and his red jacket flared as he struck a pose.

"I am Jiraiya, one of the Three Sannin!"

"Oh, like Orochimaru," Hariya said. "You're almost as weird as he is." Then she began to cry.


	13. Too Much Exposition

"Waaaaaaaaah!" Hariya wailed. "Waaaaaaaaah!"

There was a moment of awkward silence, aside from Hariya's ear-pulsing sobs.

"Who's this?" Jiraiya said, pointing a thumb at her.

"Who're _you_?" Naruto demanded. "You made Hariya cry by knocking out our pervert teacher. Now who's going to train us?"

"Me, the great and legendary Sannin!"

"The Sannin?" Sakura gasped. "What are you doing here?"

"Pay attention to me," Hariya blubbered.

"You said something about Orochimaru," Jiraiya said. "What do you know of him?"

"He's a creepy snake weirdo who showed up at the end of the second exam," Hariya sniffed. "He's my jonin instructor."

"We met a creepy snake weirdo during the second exam," Naruto said. "Think they could be the same person? He bit Sasuke and made him into a wimp."

"He offered to bite me too." Hariya's lower lip trembled. She wanted to be feeling emotions, not dealing with the plot.

"Who's on your team?" Jiraiya demanded just as Hariya decided to start crying again.

"Kabuto-weirdo and Tsurugi-free-hee-heeak," Hariya sobbed.

"That explains that," Jiraiya said. "We just found out from Kakashi that Kabuto is working for the Sound."

* * *

><p><em>Earlier that day<em>

"…And then I will eat Sasuke and destroy the Leaf," Orochimaru cackled. "Bye for now, Kakashit!"

Orochimaru disappeared.

Kakashi was hunched over, breathing hard. He covered his Sharingan up with his forehead protector and straightened up, thinking.

_I should tell someone about this._

* * *

><p>"Kabuto's a traitor?" Sakura gasped. "But he seemed so nice."<p>

Strangely this did nothing to help Hariya's mood.

"I don't care about Kabutard or whoever this snake guy is," Naruto said. "You knocked out our teacher, and now you have to take responsibility." He pointed a finger dramatically.

"Fine, fine, I'll train you," Jiraiya sighed. "Gosh, I'm so put-upon."

"Since you're the son of the Fourth Hokage, and Jiraiya trained the Fourth Hokage, he probably showed up here specifically to teach you, even if he's pretending otherwise," Sakura said.

"Wow, really? I'm so great! Believe it!"

"No, no, that's definitely not it," Jiraiya said, waving a hand weakly. "I just need to make sure the demon fox doesn't give everyone in the village some combination of ergotism and measles."

Naruto patted Hariya on the shoulder. "It's okay, we have a teacher again, and he's way better than pervert-sensei."

"That's not why I'm crying!"

* * *

><p>"So you're a space traveler from the distant planet Earth." Naruto scratched his head. "And you're not even a ninja? That's so weird."<p>

"This is planet Earth," Sakura said. She looked skeptical.

"That's just because the universal translator makes it sound like that to you," Hariya sniffled. "It's really a distant alien planet. And you're all _lazy_ aliens, just humanoids with a weird facial feature, like Naruto's whiskers or your huge forehead. It's like the universe isn't even trying."

"If you're scared, just quit," Jiraiya said. "Seriously, I have things to do. Get out of here."

"Never quit!" Naruto said. "You made a promise, and you can never go back!" To Jiraiya: "Tell my friends to leave again and I'll give you leprosy."

Jiraiya held up his hands. "Okay, okay, just she's going to die. The third exam is no joke."

Sakura shrugged. "Honestly it seems safer than the forest of death. None of the one-on-one fights we had at the preliminaries ended in death."

Jiraiya raised one eyebrow. Hariya was instantly jealous. "The third exam isn't just a series of one-on-one fights. A bunch of genin throwing shuriken at each other for an hour? That would be lame. No, I'm pretty sure the first fight is going to be over a lava pit."

"Good thing we're going to learn how to walk on water," Naruto said smartly. "Come on, Hariya, I'll teach you shadow clones myself."

"I don't have any chakra!"

* * *

><p>"Huh," Jiraiya said, after the genjutsu failed to take for the third time. "That's bloody useful."<p>

"It's because I'm human," Hariya muttered.

"We're all human," Forehead Alien objected.

"_Universal translator_, do I need to explain this again?"

"It's probably why Kabuto pretended to be your friend," Jiraiya said. "Your behavior could be used to navigate a genjutsu."

"He taught me ninja fisticuffs," Hariya said.

Jiraiya shook his head. "That guy's been pretending to be a loyal Konoha genin for years. You can't trust anything he tells you. He just wants you for your genjutsu immunity. Admittedly, so do I."

"Genjutsu aren't scary," Naruto said. "You just bite your finger and boom, no more genjutsu."

"Naruto, you idiot, that's just the weakest kind of genjutsu," Sakura said. "Did you even pay attention at the academy?"

"No, the answer is _always_ no. Ninja Jesus, Sakura."

Jiraiya coughed. "If I may."

"Go ahead," Sakura said.

"Thank you. Listen up, disease-dog. There are three kinds of genjutsu. First are the illusions that rely on fooling the external senses, like the transformation jutsu or a jutsu to hide your sound or scent. Pain won't break you out of that kind of illusion, and it would work on…who're you?"

"Hariya Potter, sixth…oh, it doesn't matter."

"Things like the transformation jutsu would still work on Hariya, because it doesn't have to do with chakra. But don't underestimate these kind of genjutsu, even though many of them are basic. They control information on the battlefield, and it's not easy to tell if what you're sensing is a genjutsu or not. Then there are the genjutsu that manipulate your chakra and 'freeze' it in a specific pattern, producing an illusion. It wouldn't work on Hariya, and you can get out of it by shocking your chakra with pain or even something like vertigo. These genjutsu try to trap your chakra in a pattern that limits your movement, so you can't break out easily."

"Oh, okay," Naruto said, gripping his forehead protector. "And what's the third one?"

"The third kind of genjutsu is the hardest, but it's also the most powerful. Rather than keeping your chakra stuck in a particular pattern, it freezes it in a _cycle_. It's more difficult because you have to snarl up the chakra in an unnatural way. If you can't get out at a particular point in the genjutsu, you never will without outside help. The Uchiha are known for this kind of genjutsu, and the ability to see through them is considered highly valuable. That's why so many eyes are on Sasuke—and probably on that Hyuga girl too. I heard what she did at the prelims."

"What _did_ she do?" Sakura asked.

"Secret Hyuga stuff they'd kill me for talking about. Or try, anyway. Okay, let's get to training. Brat, I'm going to teach you to summon giant frogs and control the disease monster inside of you. You'll be able to make your enemies pregnant at will."

Naruto pumped his fist. "Awesome!"

"Brat-girl, I heard about your fight at the prelims. You remind me of an old teammate of mine. With your chakra control, you're definitely a genjutsu type. So I'll teach you to control your opponents from a distance. Between that and your ability to control them up close with chakra, you'll be invincible for a given level of power and skill."

Sakura twirled her hair in her fingers. "Won't Sasuke be surprised when I break his arms?"

Jiraiya looked at her askance. "Ah, young love…I guess. And you, Hariya, do you want to enter the third exam or not? I don't care so long as you stay away from Sound ninja."

"I don't have any chakra," Hariya mumbled. "I don't have a choice, do I?"

"How did you get here, anyway?" Jiraiya said.

After a moment of indecision, Hariya took off the necklace and showed it to Jiraiya. He held it and peered at the strange markings on the ring and the ring-within-a-ring.

"Where did you get this?" he said sharply. "This is Minato's seal."

Hariya shrugged. "It was under my pillow one morning. My birthday, actually. I'm only eleven years old, you know, and I've been living by myself here."

"I was fighting in a war when I was eleven." Jiraiya continued to examine the necklace. "No…not Minato's seal. What's this name…WHAT THE HELL?"

He wasn't staring at Hariya. He was looking at Naruto.

"What?" Naruto said, looking from him to Hariya and back. "What is it?"

* * *

><p>Jiraiya sat down with them. He seemed stunned, holding the necklace in a trembling hand. Hariya wished she hadn't given it to him.<p>

"My student and the Fourth Hokage, Minato, was leagues ahead of anyone else at space-time ninjutsu," Jiraiya said. "His Flying Thunder God technique allowed him to teleport to anywhere he laid a seal. A seal that looks very much like the one on this necklace?"

"Huh?" Hariya said. "What seal?"

He showed her the markings. Hariya had just assumed they were Ancient Mystical Runes.

"These are ancient mystical runes, which ninjas use to write their secret techniques," Jiraiya said. "Minato had mastered the space part of space-time, but he thought there should be more. He thought there must be a way to create a jutsu that would allow him to travel through time."

Even Hariya couldn't think of a smart comeback to that. Naruto looked thoroughly confused, Sakura pensive.

"Minato was the most brilliant jutsu researcher I've ever known," Jiraiya said wistfully. "If anyone could have done it…but the demon fox killed him." Naruto wriggled uncomfortably. "Yet this looks a lot like what he showed me the last time we met. But someone made progress. A lot of progress, judging by the existence of this necklace."

"Wasn't me," Hariya said.

"I know. It was Naruto."

"Whaaaa?" was the general reaction.

"It's right here. Copyright Uzumaki Naruto 1505 years after the birth of Ninja Jesus, the Sage of the Six Paths. Written in ancient mystical runes, of course."

"But that's impossible," Sakura said. "It's not even that year yet. And Naruto doesn't know any space-time jutsus."

"Not today," Jiraiya said. "But this is from the future."

"Whaaaa?" everyone said again.

"Stop reacting like that. Yes, this is some kind of time-travel device."

"I poke the ring in the center and the earth turns with it," Hariya said helpfully. She wiped at her eyes. "I thought I had traveled through space."

"Instead you went through time," Jiraiya said, peering at the necklace. "How many times did you turn it?"

"Five or six, I think."

"What year did you come from?"

"1990."

"So…six centuries. Hm. Hmmmm. Good thing I didn't turn it." He handed it back to her. She took it with some relief and placed it around her neck again.

"Well, that was interesting to learn," he said. "Remember, Hariya, don't mess around with time or you could destroy the space-time continuum."

"Yeah, don't destroy the universe," Sakura said.

Hariya shrugged. "I'll consider it."

"Hey, so, I become a great ninja?" Naruto said.

Jiraiya snorted. "You? A great ninja? You probably can't even master the rasengan in a week."

"What? I'll learn the rasengan if it kills me! That's my ninja way! Believe it!"

"Ugh, fine, I suppose I'll teach you these advanced ninja techniques. Let's get training."

"What should I do?" Hariya asked.

Jiraiya shrugged. "Cheerlead? I don't really care."

"I think I'll quit," Hariya said quietly. Naruto objected, but Sakura hit him. His face stuck to her fist, so she had to hit him a couple more times. By the time she was finished his head was covered in lumps, and he just waved as Hariya walked away.

So Hariya went home. She asked around for a bit and found that Kabuto was being hunted as a missing-nin, Tsurugi had disappeared, and no one cared very much when she withdrew from the chunin exams. She did learn where Kankuro was training with his jonin, as they were being monitored by Leaf ninja. She had nothing better to do, so she brought some of her notes on Konoha's flora and fauna and went to see him.

* * *

><p>Temari bowed before the Kazekage, Gaara did not.<p>

"You both failed," Kazekage-sama said. His face was shrouded by cloth.

"We apologize profusely," Temari said, her head touching the floor. Gaara's arms were folded across his chest. Without seeming to realize it, his fingers massaged just right of where his heart was.

"Fortunately our plan is not a disaster entirely," Kazekage-sama said. "I can disguise you both as my retainers. Gaara, is the earthquake beast nearly roused?"

"…Yes."

"Good. The Hyuga girl who defeated you, will she be a problem?"

"…No. I'll kill her."

"Good. But leave her eyes."

* * *

><p>Hariya gave Kankuro a big thumbs-up on the day of the third exam.<p>

"You're totally going to do great, Kankuro. I believe in you!"

Kankuro forced a smile on his face. "Cheers. Jist remin' me one mair time whit ah th' Konoha genin can dad? Fa we Sain ur definitely allied wi'."

"Oh, we already covered this like a dozen times. Remember, as a seaman aboard my ship, you're representing the entire English navy."

Kankuro tossed off a sloppy salute. "Och aye, Commodair Potter."

"I'll be watching from the stands. Good luck!" Kankuro went, and Hariya headed for the stadium, holding her necklace through her shirt.

Listening nearby, Kabuto palmed his face. The third exam began.


	14. The Third Exam Begins: Brain Battle

The representatives, nobles, and wealthy patrons of the other nations, as well as a delegation from the Sand, Kazekage and all, were welcomed to Konoha with a big sign that read, "Congratulations to all nine passers from Konoha, one from the Sand, and all the participants from the other nations!" The theme of Ner Ner, Konoha's Better Than You extended into the introductory speech by the Hokage and the cards handed out to describe the event, which discussed at length how historically rare it was to have nine passers from one nation and so few from any other, and how the lopsided distribution totally negated the international purpose of the exam. Hariya took hers and marched resolutely into the Sand section of the stands, pushing aside a guard or whatever with a cloth wrapped around his face. She gave a "what's up" nod to the Kazekage, who sat up top surrounded by his coterie. His whole face was covered, not just the bottom half like Kakashi-jerk, and he narrowed his eyes at her malevolently.

Now that she was on Team Sand, Hariya would do her best to support Kankuro. Even though his dumb old jonin had kept insisting she wasn't his coach, she basically totally was, and she was prepared to shout advice from the stands. Naruto, her old sea mate, had sold her out for toad-pervert and his time travel and his ancient mystical runes, and Sakura had only ever been press-ganged. She quit the first opportunity she had. And Sasuke-butt was just being way to secretive and cool and totally hot for Hariya to know what to do with, except for the fact that Kankuro was going to crush him.

Hariya looked at her card. First fight was Sakura vs. Shikimaru, being billed as battle of the brains. Yawn. Then Neji vs Choji, jerk-ass vs fat-ass. Then Tenten vs Naruto, Hinata vs Shino, and finally Sasuke vs Kankuro. People were taking bets on the fights, and the odds were heavily in Sasuke's favor. Little did they know about all the secret moves Hariya had personally taught Kankuro while they trained under a waterfall.

The contestants came out into the center of the arena, waving to cheers and applause. Sasuke wasn't there, probably so he could make a supercool entrance later when everyone would be looking. At least she'd be able to ogle his butt for a while before Kankuro poisoned him and then trapped him in a murder doll.

The contestants went back inside, and Hokage-sama got up to announce the first fight.

"This one's taking place over a magma pit," he said, clapping his hands. The center of the arena opened up like it was a mechanical platform, revealing a bubbling pit of lava.

"Actually it's lava!" Hariya shouted.

"No one cares!" he shouted back. "Anyway, magma pits are just one of the many amazing things the elite Konoha mercenary force offers—for a price of course. A low, low price of…."

When the Hokage had finished his sales pitch (mentioning only five times how many Konoha genin had passed), the first fight began.

The contestants resisted being pushed out into the arena.

"How am I supposed to fight over a magma pit?" Shikimaru shouted. "This doesn't complement either of our skills!"

"I can stand on his dead body," Sakura said. "But I'd have to kill him first, and how am I supposed to do that?"

A fight broke out as the two genin revolted. Several subdued chunin later, Sakura and Shikimaru high-fived on top of a pile of bodies.

"Don't mess with us!" Sakura screeched.

Someone booed. It was Hariya. "You two suck! Get off the stage so Sasuke-butt and Kankuro-bro can fight!"

"Hm, this is kind of stupid," Hokage-sama said. "I should have probably thought this out first." He snapped his fingers, and the mechanical floor closed in over the lava pit, and nobody spoke of it ever again.

Shikimaru and Sakura faced off in the center of the arena. Hayate, who still looked a little ill after a month and was totally definitely still alive, raised his hand.

"Fight," he coughed, totally killing the mood.

Sakura charged forward; so did Shikimaru, whose eyes widened like a bull elephant was charging at him. Sakura dived forward, not striking but leaping with her arms spread out like she was a living net. Shikimaru drew a knife and sliced wildly at her while he struggled to divert his course to the side. The tip of the knife stabbed into her arm as she passed him by. It didn't seem to penetrate , and Shikimaru dropped the knife like it was made of fire. When it was all said and done, Shikimaru was on his butt, a terrified look on his face. Sakura turned to him, her eyes red with bloodlust. A thin line of blood trickled down her arm. Her eyes never leaving Shikimaru's, Sakura slowly leaned down and licked the blood up.

"I thought you'd thought I'd try to make distance because your shadow jutsu only works at short range," Sakura said. "Between what I observed at the prelims and what I discussed with Jiraiya-sensei, I've analyzed your technique. I'm going to wear your corpse for the next battle, Shikimaru!"

"You are almost as scary as Ino," Shikimaru said. "Why do I always have to fight the grumpy women grumble grumble. I flipped a coin before the match to decide whether I should try to stick with you or buffer my jutsu and then advance. Looks like it turned out wrong. Sigh. I might as well quit."

"If you quit I'll literally skin you."

Shikimaru jumped to his feet. "Okay, let's go."

"Stop explaining your strategies and abilities to each other," Hayate said. "Just fight for Ninja Jesus's sake."

"That pink-haired girl is terrifying!" shouted someone from the stands.

Shikimaru jumped back, making seals. Sakura just held one palm facing up like she was holding a pizza. A blue point of light appeared just above the center of her palm. More blue lines wrapped around it, spiraling outward until it was a spinning ball of blue light like a compacted tornado made of ninja magic.

"Holy shit she learned the rasengan!" shouted the same guy from the stands. Hariya spotted him. He was fat, bald, and sweaty, and he was eating a bag of ninja popcorn, and he looked incredibly excited.

"I can also summon toads," Sakura said. "Ready to give up, Shikimaru?"

"I'd be ashamed to lose to a woman grumble grumble," Shikimaru grumbled. "It's brains vs brawn, is it?"

"That reminds me." Sakura held up two fingers in front of her mouth. "I'm also smarter than you when I want to be."

Shikimaru pointed at her, looking at Hayate. "Okay, is she broken or what?"

"Just fight, you little twerps," Hayate said. "All the adults got powered up too so it's really not a big deal."

"I didn't really improve at all this month," Shikimaru mused. "Still, how are you going to get close to me? A close-range fighter can't beat my jutsu."

"Then I'll just summon a toad to squash you."

"You'd have done that already if you could," Shikimaru countered. "Your weakness is your low chakra reserves, so if you summon a toad now you'll be helpless for the next round."

"Well, since if I need to I can beat you at any point, logically your defeat is assured, so you might as well bow out with the lowest cost to yourself, which incidentally preserves my chakra as well."

"Unless I have a desire to see you fail for beating me. After all, I'm out of the competition either way, so I might as well see you fail?"

"You? You're too lazy and unmotivated. Especially against a hot-blooded girl."

"If you quit everyone will think you're a humongous loser," Hayate said.

Shikimaru shrugged. "If I cared what people thought about me, I'd be a jonin by now. I quit." He trotted back inside while Sakura raised her fists triumphantly.

"Well that sucked," Hariya said. "Hopefully these will get over with fast so that Sasuke-butt and Kankuro-bro can fight, and then we can move on with the plot."

"That was friggin awesome!" the fat, popcorn-eating guy said. Hariya shot him a dark look, which he didn't notice. "A taut battle of minds!"

"Someone clearly just didn't have any ideas!" Hariya called to him, but he just munched popcorn.

"Bring on the next fight!"

"Don't rush me," Hayate said. "Next up is Neji vs Choji."

"Whoo! The fight everyone's been waiting to see since their characters were introduced!"


End file.
